Aviva Premiership - Round 18

First topic message reminder :

Positions:

62pts Northampton
53pts Exeter
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52pts Saracens
51pts Bath
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51pts Leicester
48pts Wasps
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43pts Sale
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39pts Harlequins
37pts Gloucester
29pts London Irish
25pts Newcastle
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1pt    London Welsh




Fri 27 th

BT Sport
Northampton Saints v Wasps, Franklin's Gardens, Northampton 19:45 GMT
Just one round of the AP before the European semis, and both clubs will have one eye on their tough away trips next weekend. Northampton have not been in the best of form but have managed to grind out results with 3 wins and a draw during the 6 nations. Wasps last recorded an away win in the AP in December so despite having the talent may not have the belief to challenge the champions. Mallinder has an interesting selection decision to make at 12. Tom Stephenson is a young man with huge potential, who has been on fire while Burrell has been away.
Both teams have players returning, but Saints returnees are of a higher quality. I expect the champions to play this Midlands derby  tight and wrestle their new neighbours out of it.


Sat 28th

Leicester Tigers v Exeter Chiefs, Welford Road, Leicester  15:00 GMT
2nd visit 5th in a must win game for both sides. A repeat of the result from Sandy Park at the start of the season will see Leicester move into the Top 4 and Exeter probably drop out. While disappointed to lose their LV title, Chiefs will have been heartened by the spirit shown in coming back and the win at Welford Rd in the semis. Much may depend on the performances of the Devon bound Parling and (if selected) Salvi.

London Irish v Newcastle Falcons, Madejski Stadium, Reading 15:00 GMT
Both sides have Challenge cup matches next week, and with Premiership safety guaranteed and 7th spot out of reach may have one eye on that. Irish won the reverse fixture and will be confident of doing a double. Falcons will hope that their threatening backs can profit against an Irish defence that scrambles well. As so often this will probably come down to how the ref polices the scrums and breakdowns. Irish will be hoping Blair Cowan can bring his Scotland form back with him and secure ascendancy in the latter.

BT Sport
Saracens v Harlequins, Wembley Stadium, London 15:15 GMT
Having secured silverware last week, Sarries will be confident that they can handle a faltering Quins team. With the play-off situation so tight, they cannot afford to have any attention drawn to their trip to Paris next week. Quins have a weekend off next week, so may choose to play all their England men. Sarries will surely give BillyV the week off.
Sarries surely too strong.


Sun 29th

BT Sport
Sale Sharks v Gloucester Rugby, Salford City Stadium, Salford 14:00 BST
Sale seem to have dropped out of the Semis race and currently sit in the ECC playoff spot. They need to win this game to keep the breathing space they currently have. Gloucester have a challenge cup match with Connacht just 5 days later and will probably field a team this week that takes the short turn round into account.

London Welsh v Bath Rugby, Kassam Stadium, Oxford 14:30 BST
Bath have major injury crisis amongst their props. With a crunch ECC trip to Dublin next week and the need to give some rest to their England guys this will not be the strongest team they have put out. They are the only side to have allowed Welsh a point so far. Yet the only chance that LW have is surely if Bath forget the clocks went forward over night and arrive an hour late.

Sale are a tough team to beat at home. If Cipriani is at 10 then they are a good quality team.

Having said that I don't know why Billy Burns is at 15 whilst Hook is at 10.

yappysnap wrote:My god we are terrible.

I was going to rant about the atrocious tackling, aimless kicking, idiotic penalties and the total lack of gameplan/awareness/leadership/skill/commitment/professionalism/class or indeed ANYTHING that a Premiership club should have. But why bother?

I would say I was stunned but the saddest thing is I really am not.

Well done Saracens and good luck next week.

Thank you yappysnap.

I would rather see a stronger Quins to give Saracens a challenge.Unfortunately things aren't going to change until Conor O Shea changes his deluded view point. Quins do not play in an intelligent manner.

He also doesn't understand why a good kicking game is so important.

One of the main reasons Saracens won was the far superior kicking - Saracens controlled territory, repeatedly pinned Quins back and used the kick to deadly effect in attack. In contrast Quins kicking was very poor indeed - allowing Saracens space and time to successfully counterattack.

Quins have some very good players indeed but currently things are not working. Quins should look to recruit a powerful no 8 to replace Easter for example. Need to find a replacement for Evans who seemed to look aimless.

Quins made a lot of turnovers against Saracens but failed to utilise them effectively.

Certain clubs like to blame the salary cap for their inability to compete when in reality it's their poor coaching and inability to adapt which are far more important factors.

I was at the Madjeski on Saturday. Not a bad crowd and a good atmosphere as usual.

Not a bad match for the neutral I suppose, but its not difficult to see why both teams are cemented to the bottom half of the table. Some say Sinoti played well.... he caused problems but seems to like jumping tackles. One of these days he's going to go home with his balls in a paper bag.

I noticed that too - thought it was illegal to jump into the tackle?

Very slippery character though - thought the defence did well to handle him.

Heaf wrote:I noticed that too - thought it was illegal to jump into the tackle?  

Very slippery character though - thought the defence did well to handle him.

He was one of the few Falcons players who looked like they could have made a difference on the day. Their defence wasn't great - when a prop runs through virtually unopposed after just a few minutes of play from the breakdown, there's trouble ahead. You could have driven a wide bus through the defence for Irish's second try. That said, Falcons did come back into the match and it was a tense finish.

They brought on a young chap towards the end that looked pretty good - can't remember his name - not sure why he didn't start for them.

Ended up being tenser than it needed to be - with a couple of minutes to go a pointless chip ahead handed them the possession from which they scored their late try - should have either kept hold or stuck it in the corner. Guess that's why we don't start Noakes these days ...

We didnt play well, even Sinoti was quiet (due to Irish defence). Irish certainly did their homework and we struggled to break them down.

Harris was the lad, he's just back from Injury.

Sinoti jumped once in to a tackle...and I hope I don't see that again. Its wrong and he is too good to have to do that.

We were very poor on Saturday...not because Irish we excellent, they just defended well and we played with no imagination at all.

Only in the last 10/15 mins with the intro of Harris etc did we actually start to look to play.

Harris - that's the one - looked useful.