By GTD
April 5 2006

Up next in the Guinness Premiership this saturday it’s our turn to visit Worcester. It's 2-1 to Worcester in the 3 recent meetings. Can Irish level the scores? Worcester have won only one of their last 5 in the GP and Irish are the best away team in the GP so far this season. Should we fear them? You decide....

To start with I've looked at some key 'stat battles'

Table Place
Worcester currently lie in 7th place with 39 points
We sit in 4th with 48 points
Point : LI

Latest Form
Last 6 games
Worcester : W L L L W L
LI : W L W W W L
Point : LI

Season Performance
Wuss Home : D W W W W L L L W
LI Away : W L L W L W W W W
Point : LI

Trys For
Wuss : 30
Irish : 36
Point : LI

Trys Against
Wuss : 42
Irish : 32
Point : LI

Recent meetings
Wuss : 2
Irish : 1

Totals
Wuss : 1
Irish : 5

The ‘but’......

On their day Worcester, like us, can upset anyone beating Wasps and Leicester at home this season, something we’ve failed to do.

We don’t seem to have performed well against them over the last two seasons with one win at home all we have to our names from the 3 meetings. These fixtures (to date) don’t seem to deliver many points.

The 2 key men to watch are Shane Drahm and Aisea Havili with the latter scoring a hattrick of tries against in their quarter final win over Northampton.

We’re struggling with injuries spread across the squad ending our game against Bayonne with only 13 on the field and no-one left on the bench. The good news in that department is that Juan Leguizamon and Faan Rautenbach are rumoured to be back for Saturday. Let’s hope that the aftermath of the walking wounded from Sunday is not as serious as it looked.

With Gloucester away to Sale this is a fantastic opportunity for Irish to cement our 4th place status. It’s actually one of the toughest matches to call but I think if the Irish that we know can score tries ‘turns up’ on Saturday we should edge it.

Weather Forecast : currently to stay dry

Prediction : Irish by 5