By The Prof
January 3 2003

Well first things first – Happy New Year to you all. To be honest there were few positives to come out of last week’s game away to Bath. Dan Luger returned to the first team after a long time out with injury but it is difficult to say how well he played because he rarely got the ball – in fact I can’t remember him getting the ball once from one of our players.

The team looked pretty good on paper and it seemed that we would be close to our first choice line up after having a lot of long term injuries, the ones who were still out were Winters, Greenstock, Wood, Starr and Slemen. This match allowed Duncombe, Burke and Greenwood to play together in the Premiership together for the first time this season. But alas, even with what should have been a strong scrum and pretty much our first choice set of backs we did not play well and the result was poor.

We did see a fine defensive game from Codling again who put in a number of big tackles, and although the finishing pass was aimed at Harvey the invisible winger rather than Greenwood, Tani Fuga’s break for the line in the first half was a good start.

One thing that was promising was the size of the away support, the coach organised by Will Warner was full and there was a large Quins contingent in the crowd who had travelled down under their own steam. The anticipation before and the despondency after the game show that we supporters expect the team to win these away games, not because we demand it because we pay our money and it’s what we deserve but because we think we have a team that is able to do it, could we have said the same thing two or three years ago?

The news that Laurent Gomez has broken a bone in his ankle is quite a blow since he has continually performed well this season, but thankfully Jon Dawson is back from injury and should be taking his place in the starting line up. We also have a fine scrummager in Bruce Starr who should be fit again for the Leicester game in the cup after injuring his calf in training a couple of weeks ago.

The U21s did better against their opposition from Bath by beating them in the last minute of an exciting match, tries came from regulars on the score sheet - Henry Barrett (2), Tom Williams, Adrian Jarvis and Chris Cracknell. It is good to see the youngsters doing well, for a lot of the season they have had to put out a weakened side with players being called up to the second team due to the number of calls up to the firsts because of injury. The U19s also won.

The Ladies and Amateurs had a weekend off as did the seconds who will next be playing against Northampton at The Stoop on Monday at 7:30pm.