By Whaley Shark
December 29 2011

Janus, the Roman God of Gates and Doors, Beginnings and Endings, is the guy for whom January is named, and is depicted with two faces, one looking forwards and the other backwards. So it seems appropriate both to look back at Newcastle at home, and forward to Leicester away.

Newcastle first. They may be bottom of the table, but they are no pushovers. They’ve strengthened their squad, and the threat of potential relegation must be starting to focus minds at Kingston Park, so you’d expect them to put up a fight, which they certainly did. We had one of our bright starts, with a super individual try from Tom Brady, and built a decent lead before letting Newcastle back into the match. Just as things were getting very tense, we had a bit of luck as Falcons lost control of one of their scrums and we caught them cold with our second try. We had no right to assume that Falcons would roll over and die, and our priority was surely to come out ahead in what was a must-win game. We did that, we deprived Falcons of a losing bonus and, after the first twenty minutes, we never looked like getting a try bonus. Not particularly pretty, and perhaps disappointing in front of our largest crowd for a couple of years, but can you imagine what we’d be saying if Falcons had won?

And so to Leicester. Well, I certainly don’t view that as a must-win game, and I’ll be interested to find out how we get on. The pressure will be off and I see no reason why we can’t just turn up and give it a go.  While Tigers may still be weakened by injuries, most recently to Manu Tuilagi and Louis Deacon, their ‘weakness’ is relative, and I imagine we are still in for a tough afternoon on Sunday. So what’s going to happen? My heart says they’ll be complacent and we’ll nick a narrow win; my head says we’ll get a losing bonus. Oh, and there’s just a slim chance that we’ll play for the whole 80 minutes the way we have played for 20, 30, 40 minutes in our matches so far, and if that happens, we’ll stuff them.......

I'm taking the trusty notebook down to Welford Road, so hopefully normal service will be resumed after that. Happy New Year to one and all!