By The Prof
March 7 2003

Another away game another loss, no positives there I hear you cry – well it obviously could have been better but it wasn’t all bad. First of all we scored tries and lots of them (sadly Bristol scored more though), enough to secure ourselves a bonus point, the tries came from the back three, a centre and the number eight – the sorts of positions you would expect to see scores coming from an exciting attacking team. Will Greenwood’s try is definitely one we will be seeing replayed on telly a few times, no not on the Rugby Special try of the month segment but on things like A Question of Sport and They Think It’s All Over! The cries of put the ball down as Shaggy stood there behind the Bristol line ball in hand were deafening!

At one stage we were 41-17 behind, it looked like we were facing a trouncing but the team pulled together and they fought back to secure a second bonus point for narrowly losing.

The management pulled players off in the second half and the replacements all added to the team effort, the injured Diprose came on for Luke Sherriff, Bill Davison came on for Jim Evans and immediately added an edge to the pack and just before the hour mark new signing Ceri Jones replaced Pablo Cardinali and had a good game in the front row. The other two new boys Billy Fulton at scrum half and Mel Deane at centre both had very good debuts and we can expect them to see them in the starting line up for a while to come.

Other players of special note in the game were Nathan Williams who performed well throughout, Tani Fuga who played at an incredible pace throughout and alongside Ace Tiatia he punched holes over the gain line again and again.

With the new signings looking pretty good already and having more time to settle into the team and to learn more of the moves we can expect better team performances in coming matches.

The U21s and U19s both won against Saracens, the 21s winning 54-19 and the 19s 34-7. I personally didn’t recognise many of the U19s’ players but the U21s’ team was full of familiar names, many who have played for the 2nds and the 1st team - Walton, Guest, Horstmann, Jarvis, Hammond, Reay, Allen, Barratt, Wilcox et al. Having both junior teams winning convincingly bodes well for the future.

Luger and Greenwood have both been selected for England’s game against Italy and Monye and Bell were selected for the U21s squad although it seems that Monye has had to pull out with injury with his place being taken by Barratt. Congratulations to them all.

Elsewhere in the club the Ladies had a resounding win against Newbury scoring 82 unanswered points. The Ladies are in third place in their league and are pressing for top spot. Another Quins team at the top of their league are the Amateurs who beat Kilburn Cosmos 33-5 who are now first in Herts/Middlesex 3 South league.

Tonight Roy Winters continues his recovery from injury alongside Viliame Satala playing for the Barbarians against a London Irish All Stars team in a charity match for Jarrod Cunningham.,