By BrianC
August 17 2004

We scrape a home win against Narbonne. Poor ball handling seems is a cause for concern. Paul O'Sackey is taken away from the Madstad in an ambulence but is apparently ok. An Ed’s diary – 13th January 2004

London Irish 20 – 13 Narbonne. A win in atrocious conditions yes, but we were all expecting to go to France with a much greater margin under our belts than this. Even allowing for the awful weather, there were hail storms in the first half, reports indicate that our handling and use of the ball was poor. One very worrying site was that of Paul Sackey being taken away from the Madstad in an ambulance. We have subsequently learnt that he is ok, thank goodness.

During the game we were the only source on the web offering live score updates. This was achieved thanks to ‘thieldsof’ texting me a commentary which I duly posted. We had quite an audience, towards the end on the match about thirty were online. The stats show that we had over six thousand hits, about double that of a normal Sunday. There certainly is a demand for this kind of service.

There is a general feeling that we have lost the momentum we had earlier in the season. The mood in and around the messageboard is not as positive as normal. Hopefully a good tour to Narbonne, ideally with a victory, will brighten things up. Should we get through this round of the ECC, the next round most likely sees us playing Connaght. This would be a memorable occasion, the first time we have every played an Irish province in a competitive game. It would also be the first time we’d played a province on English soil.

Sportnetwork have come up with a new design for the site, it looks much better. I have no idea yet when they are planning to go live with this, hopefully not too soon. Subtel, having moved house and waiting for a BT connection, has been offline for a few weeks now. We could most certainly use having him around when the switchover comes. We’re also kicking around ideas on a new logo for the site, I feel that we need to develop our own ‘brand’. The pint of AG and leprechaun at the top of the site at the moment just don’t do it.

World tour of Narbonne next weekend. I wonder what tales will come from that.