By GTD
November 23 2006

The 9th round of the Guinness premiership sees 10th hosting 9th at the Madjeski this Sunday. Last week Saints moved from 7th down to 9th and Irish from 8th down to 10th .The sides are having very similar seasons impacted by injuries to key players. In the Premiership the records are identical with both sides registering 3 wins and 5 losses. Saints acquiring one try bonus point more than us (i.e. 1 !). Both have beaten Bath and Newcastle although both Saints’ wins against those two were home victories whilst the Irish have defeated the same sides on the road. The only other side Saints have scalped are Wuss with ours being our opening day beating of Quins. The differences appear in who they have lost to i.e. Sale, Tigers, Glos, Quins and Sarries compared to our, arguable tougher list of Wasps, Bristol, Sale, Glos and Tigers.

This is the weekend where Irish need to start proving that we are only where we are in the league due to the tough opposition we’ve faced in the first 8 rounds. Northampton’s injury crisis is lessening this weekend with the announcement that Carlos Spencer and Mark Robinson will definitely be available with maybe Steve Thompson being in the reckoning pending neurological testing. We await the Irish injury situation with anticipation.

Saints have the slight advantage in form over the last 6 games with a run of LLWLWL versus an Irish ‘run’ of LLLWLL. Their ‘extra W’ down to a win over Border Reivers in Europe.

Irish tend to do slightly better away from home against Saints with us winning 4 out of the last 12 matches at Franklin Gardens in the league. Worryingly our record at home is only 3 wins out of the last 12 meetings. Last season however we recorded a huge 30-3 victory in the corresponding fixture.

With Irish never featuring above 6th in the league this season this is the time. The time for us to click, stop knocking on, put together some simple phases of play and show some attacking ‘nouse’ in the backs. If we do that we know we can beat anyone on our day and Sunday needs to be our day.

Prediction : Irish 25 v 18 Saints (but I’d take 3-0 !!!!)