By Whaley Shark
December 2 2012

 Well, if even God, with the fog, tried to draw a veil over Friday night’s performance, I probably shouldn’t spend too long talking about it…..

 

The first half was pretty much business as usual for us this season, with what looked like three pretty straightforward Saints tries, one well worked down the left but aided by some sloppy tackling, one memorable for the silhouette of a Saints forward (only a forward can run like that!) outpacing our defence over 30 metres, and one gifted right at the end of the half as one of their players scooped up a loose ball and ran in from almost half way. As we went in at half time, 27-3 down, the guy next to me said “At least against Gloucester last week it took the whole game to get so far behind”.

My pen also exploded with the excitement at half time, so my notes for the second half are a bit sketchy. We nicked a try just after the restart, set up by a strong Cameron Shepherd run, working the ball through the phases, and then creating a gap to put Rob Miller in on the right. I was a bit surprised that Saints weren’t going hell for leather to get the 4-try bonus, but they seemed content to keep us at arm’s length and the second half passed almost uneventfully in the murk until, with just a couple of minutes to go, the forwards bulldozed over for a Tommy Taylor try. At 27-16 down, we suddenly seemed to realise that, with another try, we’d get a losing bonus but we didn’t have enough time to fashion a long range score and the game ended.

So that’s now Played 10, Won 1, Points 6. We may have been better in the second half, but the game was gone by then and how much was us improving, as opposed to Saints just easing off, I don’t know.

Looking at the table, Welsh have won a few and are now 13 points above us, in the giddy heights of tenth, while Irish, whose form is almost as lamentable as ours, seem at least to have the knack of picking up bonus points here and there. As a result, we only just about remain in touch with them. We’ve got back-to-back Heineken games against Toulon coming up, which should be nice, then two more Premiership games before New Year, Wasps away and Worcester at home. So by New Year we’ll be over half way through the AP fixtures and I think it’ll be clear whether Mitchell is the miracle-worker he’s portrayed to be, or whether our slide is irretrievable. Over to you, John……