By Rupert Thacker
December 24 2004

Boxing Day sees Harlequins arrive at Vicarage Road with both sides expecting to extend the Christmas celebrations for their supporters with a win to soothe fears of a bottom-place finish in the ZP. Quins have what can only be described as a poor season to date – 3 wins from 11 in the Premiership, little success in the Heineken Cup and dumped out of the Powergen Cup last weekend.

Having lost their first 8 ZP games, the 3 wins on the spin came against ourselves (40-10), most surprisingly against Sale at Edgeley Park (19-13) and then Leeds at The Stoop (31-17).

Since that run in November though, they have been blown away by the Neath-Swansea Ospreys (twice) and Bath; heavy defeats all three and defeats which have continued, in the eyes of some supporters, to call into question the role(s) of Mark Evans.

Without getting involved in that debate, I’d suggest that all the momentum of those 3 wins has been lost completely and that the winning habit is still a fair way off for Quins.

Due to injuries, Quins will be without both Will Greenwood and George Harder for the game, adding to their apparent problems in selecting a settled backline. Mel Deane and Daffyd James will start in the centres for them and hence the Sarries selection has to be spot on there – both are strong runners, we will need to ensure that our defence is watertight in that area.

One other Quins player to pick out is the scrum half, Steve So’oialo. So’oialo has started to fire recently and looks to be providing whatever “go forward” Quins have. Mosese and Mogs will need to be at their best to counter his movements.

It’s actually quite hard to sit here and write “Sarries will need to watch player x or player y” or anything along the lines of “we may have the edge up front”.

You see, we were supposed to be “better than Quins” about 7 weeks ago, when we were humiliated at The Stoop. To remind everyone, Nigel Wray left after 35 minutes (the beginning of the end for Rod, no doubt), we conceded the fastest try bonus point in the history of the ZP and it was possibly the worst performance from a Sarries side in the professional era.

Fair play to Quins, they can only beat what is in front of them and they certainly took full advantage – their fans would have been hoping that was a turning point.

How to motivate the Sarries team is simple – get them all to sit down, watch the video of the evening of November 12th and then let them loose to claim revenge. Put bluntly, nothing less than a 5 point victory will do from this game if we are to have any chance whatsoever of looking at the end of season jamboree that is the wildcard play-offs.

The Sarries team shows just one change from last week, with Seymour replacing the injured Vyvyan and Alex Sanderson taking over the captaincy. But it shouldn’t really matter who plays. The club as a whole should be going out there to continue the recent good form and to put right many, many wrongs created on that hideous night in November.

We are fresh from qualifying for quarter finals of both the Powergen Cup and the European Challenge Cup, we appear to be playing with confidence and, at some point, the glimpses of “what we can really do” have to be translated into an 80 minute performance. Let’s hope that it is on Boxing Day where everything clicks and we put on a show for the expected 10,000 plus crowd. Happy Christmas everyone.