By BrianC
April 4 2005

On Saturday we start the 2004/5 season with our home game being one half of what I firmly believe will become a regular feature in the club rugby calendar, the London Double Header. A crowd of over forty thousand will be watching us play Quins and Saracens play Wasps. The vibes emanating from Sunbury are very positive. Whilst it is always difficult to read too much into the pre-season friendlies our victories over London Welsh, Connacht and in particular over Munster at Thomond Park seem to have buoyed the spirits. The new signings seem to have fitted in well with the squad, there appears to be genuine competition for every spot in the team.

Quins, on the other hand, have had a patchy pre-season. Having picked up a string of injuries at the Compass Sevens, they went down 10 – 7 to Bedford the following week. Things seemed to be back on track when they toured Northern Ireland the following week. A comprehensive 3 – 63 victory over their Belfast namesakes was followed by a 19 – 26 victory over Ulster at Ravenhill. Last weekend however was very bad news for them indeed. A combination of the injuries they have already accrued and a bug running through the squad meant that they were unable to field a team and at a very late stage had to call off their scheduled game against Saracens.

I was at the Ulster vs. Harlequins game and came away from it thinking that this Quins side have weaknesses, which we can readily exploit. Their pack is relatively light and, whilst not pushed around the park by Ulster, showed signs of weakness under pressure. Particularly in the first half their defence appeared a bit slow and was pierced several times, most notably by quick ball from scrums. (Mike Catt are you reading this?).

On the other hand they set up several tasty looking rolling mauls, one of which resulted in a try. Their lineout functioned well and they have a number of very fast and skilful players who always looked dangerous on the break not least of these was Luke Sheriff who scored the winning try in injury time.

This will be the first time our full squad set foot on the Twickenham soil since that memorable occasion, the 20th April 2002. We have a 100% record at Twickenham in the professional era to defend. My firm belief is that we will do so.