By BrianC
July 22 2004

Disaster and shame. We lose to Quins at The Stoop. Quins and Bath are now first and second in the ZP. Rotherham have started badly and appear to be struggling. An Ed’s Diary – 2nd October 2003

Harlequins 15 – 10 London Irish. By all reports a very scrappy game, it was 3 – 3 at half time. We do seem to be having the same problems that bedevilled us for a lot of last season, inability to score tries and poor ball retention. On the plus side we dominated possession, had an apparently good drop goal disallowed and scored the only try of the game. It was by no means a disaster, although losing to Quins could always be described as such.

As things stand in the ZP at the moment Quins are top and Bath second, both having won their first few games. Roth having lost all their games thus far, most recently to Leeds last weekend are bottom. It does seem that the teams which get promoted from ND1 really do struggle with the step up in class that comes with promotion to the premiership.

The debate over the use of drums at away grounds lingered on for some time. In general I feel the consensus, even amongst away supporters, is in favour of them. Those who are against the idea, whilst a minority, are very vocal. Strangely enough I haven’t detected a hint of complaint from the Quins after last weekend. Even Prof who stated that he was prepared to dislike them said he enjoyed the drums.

The last week of September saw very healthy site stats. In total we managed 251k hits, our second best month ever after last May. The previous year September was the first full month we were running site. We are 59% up on last years figure, I am very pleased to see this.

The Rugby World Cup starts next week, I wonder what sort of impact that will have on next months figures. One thing I’ve noticed when International games are on is that other sites, who have more of their players on International duty, tend to do relatively better than us. Also some of our regulars are heading off to Australia for the RWC, that may have an impact as well.

Next Sunday we play Leeds at the Madstad. Like us Leeds have had an indifferent start to the season. If we win this weekend we stand a fair chance of making something of the season, perhaps even getting a HC place. Should we lose I fear we’ll be scraping along near the bottom of the table all season