Never Mind The Quality, See The Result...
Cir Mhor sends some words...
Well, we won, and we now have a cracking chance of getting to the quarter-finals of the EDF Cup. On a day when conditions were more suitable for sitting in the pub and having a few beers, rather than playing or watching rugby, we despatched a distinctly average Wasps side with rather more ease than the final score suggested.
We also saw Martin Fox ref’ing and all you can say about his performance was that Beddis will rightly have a field day – and one of the dodgy decisions involved Haskell so it’ll be double whammy time! Quite why he didn’t ask, ‘Is there any reason why I can’t award the try?’ and give the poor old telly official the chance of pointing out the blocking or the knock-on will have to remain one of life’s mysteries.
Still, swings and roundabouts, as the Assistant Referees also managed to avoid blowing for what looked a seriously forward pass from Ryan Lamb that led to a Glaws try! OK, there can be a debate about ‘momentum’, but it still didn’t look right.
Lamby: well done to the lad for not cracking when he made a distinctly average start to the game. By all accounts he’s had a rotten time of it lately (although Brian Moore informed us that he’d done well this season, thereby maintaining the Beeb’s reputation for professionalism. This was further enhanced when they said that Waldouck had come back and that blood replacement Satala had gone off!) but he showed us a fair few glimmers of what we’ve been missing, and he didn’t flinch from any of the tackles required of him.
Lesley Vainikolo also deserves a big pat on the back – if he’d read Shedweb in recent weeks he’d surely have been heading back North at a rate of knots,  but he got stuck in and had a really good game – he just looked happier too. If these two showed us that they’re still serious contenders for our first choice 22.
thought that some of the other fringe players showed why they’re not generally there. Jack Adams took me back to the days of Bish and Bash as a centre partnership, and he demonstrated a marked reluctance to throw a pass off either hand, while Mark Foster didn’t, in all honesty, show very much.
Rory Lawson still scares the hell out of me: saddled with the reputation of having ‘the best box-kick in the GP’ by Bryan Redpath, he seems to have managed to lose that skill, having been charged down on Tuesday and again today, from woefully slow attempts. I reckon we saw why Cooper has been our starting nine this season.
Willie Walker did really well although I see him as probably our third choice full-back – our famous str*ngth in d*pth really shows in that area. Moore gave him man of the match which would normally mean that it was the wrong choice but I reckon he got it right.
The forwards did pretty well against a Wasps pack that looked mediocre at best and, bearing in mind that we were missing a number of first-choice players, that has to be reassuring.
If we can’t see off the Dragons at Kingsholm we’re in trouble, and, surely a win away at Newcastle as they’ll be out of things by then. So, mission accomplished, banana skin avoided, or however you wish to describe it. I think I’ll stick with unremarkable but satisfactory. Now to the proper stuff next weekend!
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