By Wyddy
December 27 2012

Hope you all had a very merry Christmas! It’s now time for us to drag our turkey and mince pie laden corpses to Big Stoop for our second pilgrimage this season, to watch Quins take on struggling London Irish. Let’s hope we’re back for a third!

London Irish haven’t been having the best of times of late, getting crushed by Gloucester in the Challenge Cup and then turned over by a fairly pedestrian Leicester side at home in the league. On the other hand Quins have been handing out regulation beatings to Heineken Cup minnows, Zebre, and just about dominating Northampton at a rain soaked Franklins Gardens.

This has all the hallmarks of a banana skin, no one will be expecting anything from Irish and Quins will be expected by the national press to romp this. Conor is going to have to make sure that the lads have their game faces on and are not still in a festive frame of mind. Although some Irish fans will argue that we should have at least a small gift for them after our somewhat fortunate winning try at the Madjeski Stadium earlier in the year!

Irish struggle with their usual issue of not being able to get their flair ridden back line moving. With the improved power they have up front in the form of the developing Garvey and some decent back row combinations, using Danaher, Hala’uifa and Gibson amongst others (although the loss of Treviranus has set them back). There should be no excuses for not getting numbers to the breakdown and setting a decent platform for the backs to showcase what they can do. Unfortunately for Irish this just isn’t happening and in the last couple of games as soon as they go down by more than a converted score, heads drop and their play becomes more fragmented as they chase the game. Potential problems at half back could be to blame, with neither Humphreys nor Allinson (in the absence of irritating tinker Tomas O’Leary) taking recent games by the scruff of the neck. Also an issue is their lack of centres at the moment necessitating them to play Tagicakibau at 12, robbing them of his physical threat on the wing. The sooner they get Guy Armitage and the Prodigal Son (Geraghty – who has yet to fire for them) back fit the sooner they can correct the issue at inside centre and get Tagicakibau back to his favoured position.

If their problems in the last quarter continue, questions have to be asked of their teams conditioning, and it is here that Quins should look to capitalise. We have a strong bench who are used to playing first team rugby and if, as we would hope to be, we are a few points ahead, then bringing on the fresh legs of Botica with either JTH or Casson and they could struggle. Another oddity about Irish is that prior to the start of the season they brought in defence guru, Shaun Edwards. He appears to have had little to no effect for them, their defence being amongst the most porous in the league and the players struggle to make clean tackles around the legs. If this is part of a tactical play to keep the tackled player aloft and strip the ball... they need a lot more work on it.

Last time we played Irish, it was an edgy affair, Botica duelling it out with Humphreys and Care getting us back in the game with an intercept try after a charge down by Gibson was collected by Guy Armitage for the opening score. Right down to the wire and Tom Casson performed his Mauritz Botha routine near the touch line after a Monye offload, and somehow managed to score within the laws of the game. This time around however Casson comes into this game after some sterling performances, he was close to man of the match against Northampton and has ousted Jordan Turner-Hall from the first team line up on merit. With Casson in the centres with Hopper, we seem to have lost none of the defensive stoutness we have with JTH there – I of course talk about this seasons version of Hopper rather than the headless chicken 2011/12 version. Expect a pretty much unchanged back line (Xmas DIY injuries not withstanding) to run out at Twickenham, Monye and Williams taking the wing spots and our vaunted first choice duo at 9 and 10, Mike Brown to hopefully continue where he left off with his man of the match performance against Saints.

Up front, I hope Marler continues his comeback from his ACL injury, he was a bit quiet last week and lacked a little mobility and aggression around the park, apart from his tango with Tonga’uiha. James Johnston will resume on the other side of the pack if he has got his breath back from a couple of gut busting breaks against Saints with Joe Gray in the middle. Robson will partner either Matthews or Kohn in the second row depending on whether Conor will rest Ollie and they will be backed up by the still first choice triumvirate of Robshaw, Fa’asavalu and chip and go king, Nick Easter.

Coming to the half way point in the season seems like an ideal time to look at the stand out performers in the team so far this season. Of particular note for me is Matt Hopper. I wasn’t a particular fan of his at the end of last season but my main bone of contention were his numerous defensive lapses, out of position, falling off tackles etc. However he has developed to the point where I no longer worry when I see his name on the team sheet, he has become robust in defence holding his line well and his tackle technique has improved. His attacking nous is insightful and he cuts some wonderful lines, in particular he works very well in conjunction with Williams, both feeding each other some fine ball. Keep it up Matty.

Another who is, to use his terminology, #bossingit, is Danny Care. This season he has been stellar (rather than Stella), at the start he was rotated with Dicko and I think that has driven him on, no doubt about it that allied with the competition he faces at England level this has been the catalyst. His performances are markedly more mature, even his box kicking has come on a treat, he established himself as a major factor in our dominance up at Franklins Gardens. On this form Lancaster surely has to give him the No9 for the Six Nations particularly in light of another yellow card for petulance from Ben Youngs last weekend.

Worthy mentions go out to, Nick Easter, Mike Brown, George Robson and Rob Buchanan. Some blinding moments from them all.

All in all life couldn’t be much better for a Quins fan as 2012 draws to a close. What a year it’s been. Our first league title, on the back of a season we will all remember for many a year, some memorable wins and some memorable opposition. Then to kick off this season with a raft of bonus point victories, including one of the most remarkable comebacks ever against Wasps. To be topping the Premiership, our Heineken Cup group and our LV Cup group, with the A League trophy all ready in the bag... it’s a high time to be a Quin.

#QUINVASION

Quins by 10 pts

COYQ!!!!!!