By Innings
January 5 2022

It is against my religion to write previews of matches, but the attenuated team of authors who keep this board alive is down to last man standing, so here goes.

Fortunately, I watched and paid attention, during the televised game at Kingsholm last weekend.  I was impressed by aspects of the game, not least by the way in which the locals effectively reduced Marcus Smith to a bit-part performance.  He was as ineffectual as in any game that I have seen him play, and without his star-dust Harlequins would have been as manure as the manure-coloured away strip that they seem to have adopted as a nod to their shirt sponsors.  The commercial minds at the Stoop may call it green, but other might call it an earthy four-lettered manure tone.  However, necessary focus on the Smith threat had little left for focus on Danny Care, who effectively out-thought and out-competed against his opposite number and others throughout.  All that is a roundabout way of saying that I thought that Gloucester were a tad unlucky to lose the game, and that they will have had some thoughts about tweaks and improvements as they prepare for this week.

 Meanwhile, Saints were well in their game at the Gardens until half-time, but it seems that the weather caught them out in the second half and they got into a competition to beat Sarries in exactly the style that the visitors mastered years ago.  

I have no idea how the teams will line up on Saturday.  Jamie George seems to have returned to the action in exemplary style last weekend, but Billy Vunipola came off, perhaps injured but perhaps as a precaution after a less significant knock. Elsewhere, we seem to be well set-up with valid options in every position.  With Alex Goode, Max Malins and Alex Lozowski all fit, it is difficult to be anxious about when Owen Farrell will return, and one might suggest no other team can afford to be as relaxed about a talisman player being absent as we have been about Owen’s need for proper recovery, and dare I suggest, rest from the relentless treadmill.

Gloucester are perhaps in a less fortunate situation.  One might speculate that in the front row, Val Rapava-Ruskin and Jack Singleton return to the club where they spent some time, joined by Fraser Balmain.  If that is the selection, I think that they will need to be somewhat more effective than they have been so far this season.  Gloucester’s scrum can go well against good teams but has not flourished against the serious scrummagers like Exeter, Sale and Quins, having lost two of those three matches, all home games.  The back row is solid, and Ruan Ackermann is in the best form of his life.  I would certainly have seen him opposing Billy as the match up of the coming weekend.

Behind the scrum, for me, Louis Rees-Zammit and Billy Twelvetrees are pivotal.  The former threatens as a player with a broad set of skills and excellent attitude.  The latter is perhaps playing the best rugby of his career, a far more talented centre than the bash-it-up player who so excited England for a short time after the disaster of the 2011 RWC.  He is playing better now than ever, and is enabling those around him to become better players as well.  Perhaps Adam Hastings should make a third pivotal name here, But whilst he is a sound, indeed established international, player, he has never seemed to me to offer the game-transforming abilities of other tens in the Premiership.  

So, for the game on Saturday offers some interesting selection opportunities for MMc.  He could select his strongest XV, knowing that every one of them has a game-free weekend coming up, followed by a second-tier Europe game, before renewing Premiership action at the Coventry Building Society at the end of the month.  He could do some mix and match, but my guess is that a side very similar to the one that went well against Saints will turn out again, with the certain exception that the back row will see an enforced change, with Jackson Wray’s head reconstruction keeping him off the pitch for some little time to come.  Owen Farrell could be fit, but MMc might prefer to give him one more week, give him a run against Irish in the European Challenge the following week, and then bring him back into full action in Coventry.  

So, this weekend brings a last-time home loser against a last-time away winner, second against fourth in the table.  Gloucester will be uncomfortably aware that to lose this weekend could leave them drifting into the zone where they would be in a deadly battle with Saints and Exeter on the margins of the top four positions.  However, a win would be handy, keeping the pressure on those both ahead and behind in the queue.  Sarries will not want to take any silly risks of a third loss this season; both losses and the draw thus far have been self-inflicted, and a fourth would be a sorry blow from a side who may lie fourth in the table, but who are, in truth, not playing well enough to expect to win on Saturday.