By BrianC
May 10 2005

Rather than blogging you to death as I did last year, this time round I review the season in four sections. The series starts with September and October 2004.

The season started with an experiment in the shape of the London Double Header at Twickenham. By every measure, not least the fact that we beat Harlequins 18 – 12, the day was a great success. Fifty one thousand people watched both our game and the subsequent one where Saracens narrowly beat Wasps in a game most believed to be a much higher standard than ours. The sun shone, we had a fantastic car park party, all in all it was a great day.

OxonRob’s match report Deeply Deeply Happy at HQ points out how well the lineout was working ‘A thing of beauty’. This was something we were to witness in many more games at this stage of the season. Bob Casey was voted MOTM for the first of what turned out to be three consecutive occasions. With some very tough games to come we badly needed this win. Given that it is against the auld enemy it is particularly sweet. There is much rejoicing on the site even Carrickman has some nice things to say about the performance.

Our next game, away at Gloucester, is a 23 – 16 defeat. Given how tough it is to play at Kingsholm and the fact that we have only once in the professional era won there is a general feeling that it was a good performance. This does not however tell the full story. As Jock Convert’s match report highlights, this is a game we could have won, we were 5 – 13 up after the first quarter. And still had a one point lead at half time. It appears the problem that dogged us for much of last season, poor handling, has resurfaced.

Elsewhere in the premiership both Quins and Bath have had bad starts to the season, losing both their games. Worcester manage to pick up a losing bonus point which, as mulledwinemarie points out, brings them up to 10^th in the table. Sale lead the table after two victories, at home to Leicester and away at Wasps.

The first Madejski game of the season was always going to be a tough one, against Leicester. This turned out to be the case we were thrashed 22 – 39. In my match report Whatever Happened to Fortress Madstad I bemoan the fact that it is ten months since we have seen a ZP victory at the Madejski and that we have not been defeated so heavily there for almost two years.

Yet again the scoreline does not tell the story of the game. We a gifted a try from the kick off. Scored after 26 seconds, it is the fastest on record in the ZP. After this start we did well to get back into the game. We did in fact briefly take the lead on thirty five minutes but went in behind after some scintillating play by Geordan Murphy tore our defence apart. As Green White and Gary Gold described it Class, class, class ….

What concerned many of us who saw this game was that our tackling seemed to be half hearted. The defence, which had looked so good in the previous games, was penetrated time and time again. There is a lot of work to be done on the training field.

Our fourth game of the season took us to Wycombe, the current home of Wasps. Here we went down 35 – 19. Again we could have won this match. We had the better of the first half and early in the second led 12 – 19. In her match report Mrs. Goz questioned the use of multiple substitutions ‘Why do we keep doing it?’ Jonny_C pointed out afterwards that there were positive points to take from this game. Some of our new signings, particularly Paul Hodgson and Scott Staniforth are catching the eye.

September ends with Sale at the top of the ZP having won all four of their games to date. Quins are bottom, not having won a single game. London Irish, with one victory and one losing bonus point are ninth.

Shaw-shank was by no means alone when he posted about the importance of our next game against Saracens, ‘Could define our season’. The scoreline in the end seemed comfortable enough, 20 – 3 to us. In his match report Who’s Sorries Now, SteveS points out that Saracens were within a score of us until right at the end of the game and there was even a danger of ‘A travesty of a result occurring’ despite our domination of the game. He further points out that ‘There are still too many mistakes, knock-ons and misplaced passes for us really to have too many pretensions about moving much higher than lower mid-table’.

Worcester record their first victory of the season in convincing style. They pick up a try bonus point in their 33 – 7 home victory over Quins. A result which causes much angst amongst The Stoop faithful.

The following Friday night we are away at Sale. Prior to the game nobody holds out much hope for us. So far this season Sale have won all five of their games. Our 16 – 17 victory was the surprise of that round and occasioned much joy. As Steven Dean reflects in his match report the defence looked very well organised ‘Someone is using his eyes and correctly calling where the threat is coming from’. In the aftermath of the game the site had a good sprinkling of visitors from other clubs, not least from Leicester supporters. Our defeat of Sale allowed the tigers to take the lead in the Zurich Premiership that weekend.

In the MOTM poll ‘The Whole Team’ won, this is a rare event indeed, what good feeling there was did not however last long as is evidenced by the following weeks poll. This was won by ‘None of the above’ in the wake of our bitterly disappointing 12 – 16 defeat by Leeds. Jonny_C in his match report Irish suffer a Hydeing reported that, whilst we may feel hard done by after a poor refereeing performance, we did not deserve to win the game. It was certainly an error strewn performance played in poor conditions.

The mood on the site was poor. Even some of those who rarely criticise the club were roused. TJM in his Thoughts on Leedless game post was one such person. He points out that we are simply not street-wise enough, that we have to learn to play to the ref better, ‘Otherwise we will continue to lose and blame the ref’.

After the doom and gloom of the Leeds game relief came in the shape of our first tour of the season, this took us to the town of Auch in the South of France. Auch were something of an unknown quantity, they had only been promoted to the French first division this season.

The score, an 18 – 20 victory in Auch did not reflect how much we dominated this game. Mike Catt, whilst sharp around the field, had a very poor evening from the spot, he missed five penalties. In my match report I recorded that I was disappointed by the performance, ‘we time and time again let ourselves down with silly errors’. Auch itself was a lovely town. The tour, complete with the requisite long lunches and late nights, was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The various posts in the Was it good for you? thread say it all.

Our return game a week later was a different matter altogether. Reading Fatboy titled his match report It’s a game of two ‘alves innit saint? The final score was 42 – 18 but we had this game won comfortably in the first half. ‘Irish won the first half 35 – 6, and Auch won the second half 12 – 7’ writes RFB ‘For me there were a lot of positives’ is followed by some caveats about weakness at tight head. On the site GMC_LI took time to Praise the Coaches for blooding so many young players in this game.

We enter November 8^th in the ZP table on 14 points and having successfully made our way through to the second round of the European Challenge Shield. Leicester are top of the table with 27 points, both Sale and Gloucester are hot on their heels with 26 and 25 respectively. Even at this early stage the title seems to be between those three clubs and 4^th placed Wasps with 23 points. Quins have had a nightmare start to the season. They have lost all seven of their ZP games thus far and are bottom of the table with only four points.