Aviva Premiership Round Eleven

First topic message reminder :

Newcastle v London Wasps
Leicester v Sale
Northampton v Bath
Worcester v Saracens
Harlequins v Exeter
London Irish v Gloucester

Home wins all round? Wasps and Sarries could take handy away points? A crowd of c.80k for Exe's visit to Twickers? 150 Quins fans, 7k Munster fans & the rest supporting everyone's second favourite team?!

Rubbish reffing again at the scrun

Scoped wrote:Doyle once again shows the calibre needed of a Premieeship ref. What an awful yellow card. Pathetic

They've been consistently given for that. Must be RFU/IRB directive.

Toast wrote:Rubbish from Quins.

Ha 19-3 at half time mate!

You are an utter numpty!

PeTe gets another for Tigers as RLeic commentators do their collective nuts over the referee.

1647
Leicester Tigers 28 - 20 Sale Sharks (2nd)
Northampton Saints 33 - 18 Bath Rugby (2nd)
Worcester Warriors 8 - 26 Saracens (2nd)
Harlequins 12 - 3 Exeter Chiefs (1st)

Sorry forgot the:    

19-3 Quins

30 - 23 to the tigers. Sale picked up the bonus point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYg6nMnNk1I

Quins throwing away a BP. Rubbish.

I thought you said we would get smashed? Moving the goalposts much?

But a Exeter are now rubbish (they lost to Quins) so the TBP should have been a given.

Toast wrote:Will suit Exeter perfectly. Quins will get hammered up front and spend most of the game trying to run the ball out of thier own half. Ha ha

Another piece of gold from toasty baby

Oh Btw well done to Quins. Coped well with the Ex pressure when it came on and for 40 minutes looked very fluid, lethal on the turn over too.

Easter and Care both looked in top form.

Tigers did their best to throw that one away. First half domination followed up by an inability to tackle, especially Goneva who seemed to struggle with a Cueto rolling back the years. Plus points for Tigers were Cole who was rampant in the scrum and who made a couple of breaks in the second half making some decent yardage and Williams who had easily his best game for Tigers so far, really nice all round play.

Ref took a long time to award the penalty try but given the slating he received in the press from the Wasps game that was probably expected though it didn't help that the Sale physio kept running on to halt play further. Really took away any chance of Tigers chasing on for the 4th try after that.

Bonus point lost. Walker should have been red carded. Lambert and PDJ were rubbish. Exeter even worse. Utterly rudderless. A top 4 team would have put 50 plus points on them.

A rippingly fine day at Franklin's Gardens. Bath started very well and were up by 13 points. But Saints had one of those days. No panic, stay with the plan, have confidence. Exactly what they didn't do during the first Leinster match.

After the first 15 minutes Saints really turned it on. Great for Christian Day to nab two tries. He is one of the real underrated players in the league. Myler was terrific and really got the backs moving forward. And Manoa now appears to be a better Number 8 than second row. Almost as if he can play anywhere from 1-15. Wonder if he will go to fullback sometime soon. Fullback was the only dodgy performance the whole day.

Some of the family went to Twickenham for the Big Game today. Mentioned the atmosphere was terrific. What a fantastic concept. Great for Rugby and a great day out. Can't wait until the Gardens is expanded.

You are ruling out the possible candidates for top 4 sides. If you won't count Exeter, or us or Tigers, then who are the top 4 sides who would have put 50 on them? Have you ever tried logic?

Who you directing that question to, bro?
To me, at the half-way point of the season, we have 5, maybe 6, teams separating themselves in competition for the top 4.

Nah he's talking to serial fool Toast.

A great day out and Twickenham and a real good game to watch, I imagine he's pulling his hair out!

Only about 75000 attendance as well. For a regular club game. Pathetic.

HammerofThunor wrote:Only about 75000 attendance as well. For a regular club game. Pathetic.

You are absolutely right - no one went to the game.  And the few that did were probably not 'real' fans.
Pathetic indeed!  

I wonder what would happen if they staged a few more of these during the season. Think they could get at least 60+?

By the way, where are all the Premiership fans?  Would have expected to see a lot more comments here this weekend.

75000 - awesome !   

I'm not sure if any more Big Games would work. Right now it's a one off event that's as much a family day out as it is a rugby match. Wouldn't more of them just cheapen it a little?

Perhaps though games like: Saints v Tigers/Sarries or Sarries v Tigers could be tried out in Twickenham? Of course then there's the problem of getting the fans there etc.

If we (Quins) did want some more big games then perhaps it'd be more interesting to see Quins move some big Euro games to Twickenham and see how many they can get for those?

Worth noting that this season's ticket sales was down on the last two by about 7,000 as well so technically it wasn't a total success.

The 'boxing day' game is always well attended as generally people are off work, not playing locally and the tickets are purchased as presents. Tigers sold out, 70k+ went to see a televised game at Twickers, I bet the Gardens was sold out as well. It's not as easy to get that level of interest at any other time if year.

I get your point about the uniqueness of the Big Game. That said, I still wouldn't mind seeing another match or two tried at HQ and we see how it gets on. It strikes me the Big Game is successful partially because of the marketing. I am OK with 60,000 for a non-holiday week match between Saints and Harlequins or Tigers and Harlequins. Saints and Tigers should travel well and provide a big boost to the attendance figures. Not so sure about the other Premiership teams for any matches not during the holiday week. Putting a Euro Cup match at HQ is also a good idea. Not saying we should do this weekly. But just dipping a second toe in the water, perhaps?

Definitely a few more should be tried, especially with the up coming RWC.

I doubt many up here will be bothered about promoting the RWC. I know quite a few season ticket holders who think that the RFU have sold out and acted shamefully in allocating the RWC games. There are three games in Leicester (at the wrong stadium) the highlight being Tonga vs Argentina. If Quins can out together a package that encourages large numbers into an AP game then more power to them but the RFU can go do one if they want to use it to promote the RWC.

Irish vs Glos. Kvesic is rubbish. So are Irish. I hope they get relegated.

I bet your a bundle of laughs on a night out toast...

Are Irish more rubbish than Worcester?

Half way through the season Worcester has achieved what only one other team, Rotherham, has achieved: A perfect 0-11. Shame. But at least London Irish will keep them company for the rest of the season. Jeez this is truly bad.

Glaws were certainly in the festive spirit yesterday giving away gift wrapped tries. Once again the pack were a vast improvement on earlier this season, although it was a shame Small did his best to ruin our scrum dominance. The backs still aren't clicking, but were an improvement on the Wuss game. Next up is a nice easy home game against Sarries!! Despite our woeful start to the season we're only 6 points from the top 6!

On the last fortnight's evidence Irish should have no issues dispatching Wuss, who despite Dean Ryan's claims to the contrary, are really a very poor side. In the long run I think Wuss dropping down to the Championship will do them good and allow Ryan to offload the very average players he's inherited; he can then build a side around the likes of Abbott, Pennell and the Argentinian contingent.

On the subject of games at HQ, Wasps are hosting Glaws there on 19th April - the 'St. Georges Day' game.


http://www.wasps.co.uk/

HongKongCherry wrote:Glaws were certainly in the festive spirit yesterday giving away gift wrapped tries. Once again the pack were a vast improvement on earlier this season, although it was a shame Small did his best to ruin our scrum dominance. The backs still aren't clicking, but were an improvement on the Wuss game. Next up is a nice easy home game against Sarries!! Despite our woeful start to the season we're only 6 points from the top 6!

On the last fortnight's evidence Irish should have no issues dispatching Wuss, who despite Dean Ryan's claims to the contrary, are really a very poor side. In the long run I think Wuss dropping down to the Championship will do them good and allow Ryan to offload the very average players he's inherited; he can then build a side around the likes of Abbott, Pennell and the Argentinian contingent.

I've not seen yesterday's game yet as I've been away for the weekend, but from what i could glean from various sources, we gave away ridiculous penalties over and over again, and left 11 points out there off the tee. If we repeat that against Worcester, then we are just as likely to have serious issues against them next week. They will be coming hard for us, as realistically we are the only side they can possibly catch, and we need to be a lot better than we have been in our last 3 games.

We will lose if we played like we did yesterday. Sadly that is the truth. Worcester are gradually improving, slowly but surely. We seem to be going backwards.

Were you at the game SB? I'm hearing that TOL and iHumph were dire and there was an immediate improvement when Shane came on at 10?

Irish were relatively poor yesterday, but I can assure you that you played infinitely better than Wuss did against us the week before.

Interesting argument going on over on the craic about whether we took the right option with Shane kicking for goal late on.

19-22 down, but with 3 tries in the bag, 4 minutes to go on the clock and a difficult penalty awarded 40 yards out, which is right on your kickers limit, and he's at best a 75% kicker. Take the points and a draw giving you 2 points instead of 1, or go for the corner and try to maul it over and bag 5 points for the win?

Have to say my view is we have made a poor decision going for the posts, but I guess it comes down to confidence and we don't have much right now.

Ozzy3213 wrote:Were you at the game SB?  I'm hearing that TOL and iHumph were dire and there was an immediate improvement when Shane came on at 10?

Was at the game - first time in ages I can remember fans around me so openly frustrated. Humphreys coming off was audibly applauded by those around me. O'Leary was awful. He is slow in everything he does - passing, kicking and any attempted breaks are so telegraphed. I can't help but feel our turn-around in fortunes last season was very closely related to the arrival of Pat Phibbs. We need him back as soon as possible. Otherwise, over the summer we will have to let Allinson go in order to recruit a scrum half who can take-over as first choice. A shame as I personally quite like Allinson, but I doubt we will go forward with four first team scrum-halves. The same can be said over our issues at 10 and whether Shane will get a new contract. I would like him to, but BS has made it quite clear he prefers iHumph as his starter, but as things stand I don't really think either are quite good enough to take us forward.

To make matters worse it was, I believe, our best attendance of the season. Huge queues of people getting tickets on the door. Sadly the on-pitch product gave the fans nothing to rally around. Treviranus carried well, but it became obvious that our game-plan was just to pass him the ball and hope for him to do the rest. Sheridan and Mulchrone were good in the centres, Mulchrone in particular. Sheridan, for me and for his size, could still offer slightly more in attack, but hard to complain when he scored two tries.

As for the kick-to-goal decision, it was the wrong decision. Geraghty was never going to slot a kick from 40m out. JOC may well have got it, but for some reason was not kicking. The Irish of old, the team that I fell in love with, would have put it in the corner and given it a good lash. For me, the cost-analysis of potentially taking the 5 points was worth the risk of not coming away with the extra one point that a successful kick would have given us.

SirBurger wrote:

Ozzy3213 wrote:Were you at the game SB?  I'm hearing that TOL and iHumph were dire and there was an immediate improvement when Shane came on at 10?

Was at the game - first time in ages I can remember fans around me so openly frustrated. Humphreys coming off was audibly applauded by those around me. O'Leary was awful. He is slow in everything he does - passing, kicking and any attempted breaks are so telegraphed. I can't help but feel our turn-around in fortunes last season was very closely related to the arrival of Pat Phibbs. We need him back as soon as possible. Otherwise, over the summer we will have to let Allinson go in order to recruit a scrum half who can take-over as first choice. A shame as I personally quite like Allinson, but I doubt we will go forward with four first team scrum-halves. The same can be said over our issues at 10 and whether Shane will get a new contract. I would like him to, but BS has made it quite clear he prefers iHumph as his starter, but as things stand I don't really think either are quite good enough to take us forward.

To make matters worse it was, I believe, our best attendance of the season. Huge queues of people getting tickets on the door. Sadly the on-pitch product gave the fans nothing to rally around. Treviranus carried well, but it became obvious that our game-plan was just to pass him the ball and hope for him to do the rest. Sheridan and Mulchrone were good in the centres, Mulchrone in particular. Sheridan, for me and for his size, could still offer slightly more in attack, but hard to complain when he scored two tries.

As for the kick-to-goal decision, it was the wrong decision. Geraghty was never going to slot a kick from 40m out. JOC may well have got it, but for some reason was not kicking. The Irish of old, the team that I fell in love with, would have put it in the corner and given it a good lash. For me, the cost-analysis of potentially taking the 5 points was worth the risk of not coming away with the extra one point that a successful kick would have given us.

That's it for me as well mate. I'd settle for the 1 point if we'd gone down giving it a go at getting 5. Frustrating. I've always been a big fan of iHumph, but he is struggling right now. I'm not sure that Geraghty is the answer either. Interesting times ahead for us that's for sure.

I used to be a fan of iHumph - last season he had some great games for us. He is not delivering as things stand though and I can't continue to defend him now.

But you sum it up very nicely - I wouldn't have minded the 1 point if we had given it our best shot. Sadly we didn't. As a fan of BS it is hard to know who to blame or where to look. I read an article recently where he said that there would probably be an adjustment to the backroom staff over the summer with new coaches coming in to bolster us slightly. I can't now find it, but perhaps such a move, with him continuing as DOR and a proper head coach underneath him, might put us in a better position.

One final thing - our skill levels yesterday were appalling. We need a specialist attack or skills coach to really bring the best out of the guys we have. Personally not sure what Whiffin is bringing to the table apart from an occasionally good wrap-around backs move.

Sorry for the rant - I hate being negative about our club. But yesterday really was dire!

Having said that, I imagine that once I watch it back (if I get time) I won't be feeling quite so down. Things are never quite as bad on second viewing I tend to find.

I'm going to watch the game tonight, so will be better placed to comment on skill levels after that, but I tend to agree that Whiffin hasn't exactly set the world alight as our backs coach.

On that final penalty, I would have been pretty aggrieved if Geraghty had got it as it was a very poor decision by Small.

Gloucester away is never an easy game. I am nervous. Gloucester have built up a bit of confidence now with two wins on a bounce with a big scalp locked in their sights. Lets not forget they beat Saiints. Should be a tight game.

I can't really comment HKC as I've not seen the game yet.

London Irish. Played 11. Won 2. Says it all really.

No wonder JOC is leaving so quickly.

So Toast is banned, and all of a sudden Butter appears with similarly negative comments.

Bye bye!

I did find it odd that when both Geraghty and Humphreys were struggling with kicking they didn't ask the international kicker at 15 to take on a shot. The backs looked good just not on the same page and the backs and forwards just didn't connect at all. LI made some nice half breaks or started set plays but either the recipient was not expecting the ball or another player got in the passers way. Improve that cohesion and you'll massacre that Worcester team.

Was at the match and I think we should have kicked to the corner at the end - Shane never looked like getting that kick after his  previous effort for a conversion and the risk/reward of a potential 5 points to me was a no brainer.

Kicking generally was poor as were ball handling skills and the line outs weren't too clever either.

Letting Glaws just pick the ball up from the back of a ruck and run in their try unopposed wasn't a great moment either - the only question I had was if the ball was actually out, I was too far away to see and haven't had the stomach to watch the replay yet.