By The Prof
December 5 2002

Well after tiring myself out with the amount of positives I had to write about last week in our gutsy display against Wasps (sorry London Wasps) I will have a lot less to write about this week, but finding the positives has been a tad trickier. One thing that seems to be apparent is that Quin’s teams don’t like kicking off early, both the first team and the U21s lost to Northampton when they kicked off at noon, whereas other Quins’ teams that didn’t kick off at midday won!

I must admit that I didn’t make it up to Franklin’s Gardens for the first team game but instead watched the U21s before popping over the road to watch the demolition of South Africa. That said chatting to some of the intrepid travellers on their return and reading Will’s match report I will report as many positives as possible. Erm… Right… Let me think…

So by all accounts it was an absolutely terrible performance, with just about everyone making mistakes and playing badly. There has also been talk of a large number of injuries to add to our already overly long list, but since this is a positive column that’s enough of that.

Andy Reay, after a string of fine performances for the 2nd XV, was given his first first team call up and he seemed to have fitted in well. Kai Horstmann and James Hayter were both named on the bench for the first time and Horstmann replaced Vos when he came off for injury. It must have been tricky for these new players to come into a team that played so poorly on the day but at least they have been blooded now and will no doubt have a role to play in better matches for Quins in coming seasons.

The pack seems to have performed well in the set pieces with strong scrummaging and
Codling managed a huge number of line out steals but sadly this quality possession came to nothing (well Dippy scored from that thing of beauty – a rolling maul from a line out).

The U21s fared no better in their match that kicked off at The Stoop at the same time. In fact the text messages relating the two scores that were crossing backward and forward turned out to be near identical for most of the game. To be fair the U21s side was severely depleted with calls up to the second XV game on Monday night against Worcester.

It was good to see a reasonable turn out for the U21s game with about 100 or so supporters turning up for the game. Northampton had the biggest player on the pitch and he wasn’t in the second row – he was their centre! Quins U21s performed pretty well but sadly they didn’t use the possession they had very well.

Later on on Saturday two of our players had storming games, I am of course referring to Jase and Will. Greenwood scored two very well taken tries, one running through or bouncing off a centre, a prop and a number 8! The second one showed his silky skills to their best. A third try for a Quins player should have come when the ball found its way right to Vickery who, instead of passing our of the tackle to the man outside him on the wing (our very own Jase) he decided to go his own way and made a complete pig’s ear of it – the sight of Big Jase MBE charging down the right wing for 20 yards to score is one thing that would have got me shouting even louder than I already was. Jase is now on 99 caps for England and is playing some fantastic rugby – the destruction of the Springbok front row is testament to that. With Jase knocking on the door of being a century maker it is nice to know that Will is one already, with his first try he notched up his 100th point for England (20 tries).

Elsewhere in the club the Amateurs got the points for a win without even playing – Sudbury and London Springboks were unable to field a side.

The Ladies managed to get the points for a win and even managed to play their game away against Clifton IIs. The Ladies’ pack dominated their opposition and won a number of scrums against the head. This forward dominance lead to tries for the backs one wing Saskia Brazier-Kobus and one by fullback, Alex Burbidge. It’s possible that the amount of forward domination should have lead to a bigger winning margin but the points for the win have taken the Ladies up to third place in the league!

Monday saw the 2nd XV in action against Worcester United, in a game that must have had one or two hundred spectators – this must certainly be seen as a positive. The corresponding away fixture a few weeks ago saw Andy Reay scoring at the death to pinch a victory from a deserving Worcester side. This match was much more one sided and it saw Quins’ Reserves notch up six tries to Worcester’s three. Seb Fitzgerald – the young fly-half from Oxford University – had his best game for the club so far and had a 100% success rate with the boot. Rudzki and Evans both performed well in the line outs stealing a number from Worcester, although the referee seemed to spot a large number of infringements leading to a string of free kicks for the visitors. Four players who have recently returned from injury – Dawson, Powell, Hayter and Mockford – all had good games. And the centre pairing of Barrat and the interestingly named Johnny Love gave a fine display too. Dipo Osho – a young winger – looked to have pace to spare and made a couple of very sharp attacks. All in all it was a good team.

So after the terrible results in the games that started at mid day on Saturday Quins’ performances picked up steadily.

Other news, Steve White-Cooper played 20 minutes for Steele-Bodger’s XV against Cambridge University in a 24-24 draw on Wednesday. Paul Turner will be lacing on his playing boots again in a charity match at Worcester’s Sixways ground to raise money for the victims of the Bali bombing – Neil Bowler from Worcester was killed while on tour with Hong Kong Football Club’s Vandals team. This match will take place on December 22nd. Ben Gollings (aka Frodo Well’ard) has been selected for the England VIIs squad to play in the Dubai and George tournaments and Ugo Monye has been selected as a standby. These tournaments will be played on the 6th/7th and 13th/24th December.

Here’s to getting behind our side to continue the winning run at Fortress Stoop and to getting revenge on Sarries. Come on you Quins!


Finally the editors of this web site would like to express our deepest condolences at Keith Wood’s sad loss earlier this week.