By SamB_LI
December 17 2013

Before I begin this report, I would like to insert some sort of disclaimer. When I go to watch Irish at the Madjeski on a Sunday afternoon, I take a flask of tea and my glasses. In Paris, I had left my glasses at home and, by the time I arrived at the wonderful stadium, had consumed a few pints of beer at the Mercure and Les Deux Stades and a significant part of a few bottles of Côtes de Provences rosé at Restaurant Da Vinci. This was then compounded by a discovery that the stadium was serving vin chaud.

As such, by the time kick off arrived, I and my party were quite merrily singing away from our vantage point a row or two behind the excellent band. In addition, I missed several parts of the match due to a need to avail myself of the delightful facilities (best toilets I’ve ever encountered at a rugby ground) or to top up on mulled wine.

Anyway, let’s move on to the match. Irish had shown faith in the selection from last week’s excellent victory. Whilst this was just reward, I couldn’t help but feel that a Stade pack, galvanised by home advantage and stung from last week’s loss, would be an entirely different proposition. I have absolutely no idea of the Stade line up, although I recognised Taulafo, Rabadan, Lyons, Plisson, Burban, Porrical and Doumeyreau (sp?).

Irish carried forward all of the momentum garnered from last week and exploded onto the pitch at Paris. I can’t quite remember the specifics, but a delightful cross-field kick (the execution of which resulted in my shouting “Oh no, what does he think he is doing?”) was claimed via a perfectly timed jump from Fenby to open with a try. This had been preceded by some powerful attacking play from Irish, with Leo denied a try by the skin of his trousers. The signs were good, we were solid enough at the scrum and lineout and looking powerful and creative with the ball in hand. So confident was I, that I decided to begin bothering the poor old Frenchman sitting next to me by telling him how I had wanted fillet steak for dinner but the restaurant had run out and could only offer entrecote; did he know where I could get a decent steak? To be honest, I’m not sure he was really interested. So embroiled was I in bothering this poor man, I completely missed Stade’s disallowed try, although I was confident enough that it had been a forward pass. Sadly, shortly after this, we were effectively dismantled rather easily by some devastating attacking play constructed through prompt and easy recycling and offloading resulting in a Stade try.

So dismayed by this was I, that I decided to retire to the little boys’ room. And what an experience it was. It began with the delightfully crafted heavy wooden doors. The sheer weight of these showed the quality of the wood, yet they swung smoothly and perfectly on carefully crafted hinges. This made for an aesthetically pleasing yet easy entrance and exit. Upon entering the room, one cannot help but be struck by the décor. The combination of dark tiles, elegant woodwork and sharp, clean porcelain made draining the dragon an unusually classy activity. I was so taken by the facilities that I decided to make another 4 visits over the course of the evening. Any assertions that French toilets are simply stinking holes in the ground were firmly quashed by the Stade Jean Bouin.

When I returned to my seats, I was delighted to see that we were ahead again through a penalty from Shane. This was short lived, however, as Stade cancelled out our points through a penalty before a sustained period of pressure saw Leo sent for a rest and was promptly followed by the easiest of tries from a devastating rolling maul. We managed a couple more penalties before half time, but were under pretty serious forward pressure from Stade and were struggling to get across the game line with our driving game. At some point, Doumeyrou was dispatched to the bin after an arduous and prolonged TMO referral, a speciality of the man with a whistle. Throughout the course of the evening we were subjected to constant dithering resulting in yet more referrals, several for the wrong incident. I can only imagine that Mr Davies needs a permanent TMO in his life. “What shall I have for dinner? Better go upstairs”, “Which underpants shall I wear this morning? Mark, are you there?”. Mind-numbing.

At half-time we were 20-14 down, and things really only went downhill from there. Despite some bold counter-attacking from Alex Lewington, we looked unlikely to trouble the whitewash. Darren was struggling with the accuracy of his pass and Shane was having ‘one of those days’. Add to this the fact that we were losing out in most contests around the park and we were really on the back foot. Fortunately, Leo had been replaced by Hagan in the scrum and we were actually looking pretty solid in this area – a very promising sign for the Premiership games to come. A third Stade try eventually came through their full-back, Porrical, who also added the conversion. If anything, this stimulated a response in the visitors, and we began to string some decent phases of play together. Inevitably, however, a mistake followed at some point and we were unable to threaten the whitewash. It was therefore perhaps a little unfortunate that we conceded the fourth try with less than two minutes on the clock. In no way do I think we deserved to win that game, but I don’t think we deserved to concede the fourth try, we had looked pretty solid until that final foray into our 22.

You may notice that I haven’t said much about the second half. That is because I don’t actually remember that much about it. I was far too caught up chatting to the people around me, joining in with the band and generally having a great time. My spirits were slightly dampened when I noticed that the old chap next to me whom I had been talking to in the first half had moved to two rows behind. I didn’t take it personally though.

Overall, I wasn’t particularly surprised by the result. We sent a side lacking several of our key players and they got beaten by a Stade team containing a mix of big names and solid Top 14 performers. There are several positives we can take from the past two weeks: we got a win that broke up the run of losses; Alex Lewington has the potential to be an outstanding full back; a front row of Parr, Mayhew and Hagan should hold its own against most sides and Shane has played pretty well, even this weekend under ferocious pressure. On the negative; our back five got absolutely hammered in the lineout, ruck and loose; our back play still looks a little disjointed; we badly lacked pace in the centres and our back up to Parr, Mayhew and Hagan looked as flimsy as my memories of the second half.

As a post script, we arrived back at the hotel at the same time as the team, who were also staying in the Mercure. I don’t know what they had been doing as we had been carrying out a lovely tour of the local bars for the past couple of hours sampling the white wines on offer. Brian Smith looked as though he was on the verge of exploding, so mad was he, and the general atmosphere amongst the team was woefully sombre. To me, that is a big plus. Anyone who says they don’t try or seem like they care, these guys were devastated after losing in a competition that we weren’t taking seriously. This sombre air carried through to the next day. The biggest plus was that, after the players had ravaged the Mercure shop, there were still a couple of sandwiches left for me to choose from – I never did get the name of a decent steak restaurant.