By Cherry Picker
December 21 2008

We know many things now that we didn’t know at the beginning of the weekend, and perhaps the most important is that Gloucester are NOT the best team in the Guinness Premiership. In fact, on the evidence of their 42-12 defeat away to London Irish, they are nowhere near as good as the team which currently IS the best.

Second best in the first half, Glaws weren’t even that in the second as Irish let rip with a display of attacking rugby that blew their visitors away.

It wasn’t only a question of Gloucester playing badly, it was a case of the Exiles playing brilliantly, and Glaws allowing them to do so.
As they say in those awful telly adverts, this wasn’t just a defeat, this was a bloody good trolleying.
Peter Hewat kicked 22 of Irish’s 42 points, but the fact that they also scored four tries to nil demonsrates that it wasn’t just his kicking that won the game.
Yes, Gloucester were poor … in fact, they weren’t even that good.
But let’s give credit to Irish – they really did look the part with a display of rugby that should be shown to anybody who says the club game in this country isn’t entertaining enough.
"We were significantly second best in most parts of the game. We were poor and lacked energy.
"When you have got to chase from points down, it is difficult.

"Every contest we entered, we lost. We were so far behind that we had to play a game which was not conducive to getting a result.
"We got beaten in the kicking contest in the first 40 minutes which, basically, structured the game. We maybe had one or two set-pieces in their half as a result of losing that kicking contest and, at the same time, Delon Armitage jumped up and scored to keep us under massive pressure.
"The challenge for Irish is that the Premiership is not won on a day in December.
"I think there are key attributes to their game. Hewat gives them massive composure and there are four or five guys who are great individuals.

"Whether that can cut across nine months and be sustained remains to be seen."
It does indeed, but on this evidence it has a lot more chance of being sustained that anything Gloucester took to the game.

This was an acid test for Glaws after their recent return to form - they failed it comprehensively.