By Whaley Shark
February 2 2013

A few thoughts on what the next month may hold for us.....     

Wow! Where’s that come from? Two bonus point wins in two weeks. Yes, yes, it’s only the LV= Cup, Llanelli and Wasps put out weakened teams, blah blah blah…… BUT it’s still two good wins, today’s particularly hard-fought from the sound of it, as we held out against a Wasps comeback. So very well done the lads, for getting us to our first home semi-final since I don’t know when. I was trying to remember the last time I had to buy a ticket for an extra home game, and I just can’t. I’m pretty sure it was against Bath at EP, and we lost, but I can’t for the life of me remember the year or the competition.

So in a season where we’ve had little to smile about, that’s cheered me up no end, and I’ll put the 9^th of March at Salford City Stadium in the diary. I also have tickets for the Premiership away game in Leicester the week before (it’s almost sold out by the way), and am now trying to convince myself we’ll dish out a hammering to the Tigers as a warm-up for the semi-final the next weekend.

I accept that might be a touch delusional, but it has set me thinking about the resumption of the AP campaign. The cup competition phoney war of the last four weekends is over, and it’s back to our fight for Premiership survival. Coming up, we have Exeter at home, London Welsh away, Quins at home, and Tigers away, a block of games which will go a long way to decide our fate. None of them is easy, but if we can land ten points from them, we have a realistic chance of narrowing the five point gap to London Irish, who have Saracens at home, Bath away, Wasps at home, and Saints away. While closing the gap on Irish looks possible, they are capable of surprises, as in their away win at Kingsholm, so we need a bit of luck, and also to carry our recent form into the AP.

But what have we to lose?  Hopefully past our off-field maelstroms, freed of the stresses of the AP, and not outgunned by massively resourced French sides, we’ve started to show what we can actually do. The clever trick will be carrying that confidence and style into the pressures of the AP campaign. If we can do it, I’ll put away the road atlas, in which I have gloomily been looking up directions to places like Rotherham and Doncaster, for a few weeks. We have a glimmer of hope; the next four weeks could fan that glimmer into a small glow and, with six rounds of the AP still to come after that, it could be all to play for. My glass is starting to look, if not half full, at least as if it has some liquid in it and, indeed, it may even be a liquid I might want to drink.