By BrianC
September 6 2006

We’re going to see rather a lot of Friday night rugby this season. No less than seven of our eighteen games left this year are on a Friday. To put this is context, last season we had only three Friday games out of thirty eight in the whole season.

The first such instance of this being our away game at Adams Park in High Wycombe this week.

Our last outing against Wasps was one of the most remarkable London Irish games of all time where we ran out 37 – 56 winners. Given how ring rusty we appeared against Quins last Saturday the odds against us putting up as good a performance this time will be very high indeed.

We weren’t the only team who looked out of sorts last Saturday. The Wasps team I saw did not particularly impress me as they scraped a narrow victory over Saracens. That said, it is difficult to read too much into either our or Wasps performances at Twickenham. Early season jitters aside, the conditions were hostile and the ball slippery.

Where I do worry we’ll struggle is in scrums. On Saturday our front row looked shaky against what is thought to be one of the weaker packs in the Premiership. If we put in a similar performance against what looks to be a very mean Wasps pack they’ll have us for dinner.

Over the summer Wasps made a number of key signings perhaps the most significant of which was that of Dave Walder from Newcastle. He looked impressive on Saturday as did two other new signings, Simon Amor and Tom Palmer.

If we are to challenge for a place at the top table come May then it is games such as this that we must win. Wasps at home, even without their injured captain Lally Doolally, are always tough opponents. Our boys will have their work cut out for them.

The bookies will no doubt have Wasps as favourites for this game. Can we win it? Of course we can but a winning team will have to play a lot more like the one that took them apart last April than the one that stepped out on the turf at HQ last Saturday.