The highs and lows of being fans. From the frustration of last week to the relief of this week, what a difference!
Tremendous guts, heart and spirit from the team today. To lose some pretty key players. We're lucky to have some decent strength in depth. Tom Willis looks the real deal and didn't look lightweight against a huge Bath pack.
Wouldn't be surprised to see the clearout that led to Young going off cited. However, it's a really fine margin - For a fraction of a second Young goes to commit, but decides against it by which time the Bath player(s) assume he's committed and go for the clearout, but they catch him just as he's half ducking into it.
The whole dialogue Barnes had with Dave Bassett and then West was both slightly worrying and amusing
-- "Dave, have you got a replacement hooker who has actually hooked?"
-- "Yes, Tom West can fill in, he's played there before"
-- "Tom, Dave says you're ok to player hooker"
-- "Yeah, I'll give it a go"
-- "Woah, not give it a go. It's a player safety issue. Have you actually hooked before?"
-- "Well yeah, last time was about 3 years ago"
-- "Ok, so are you sure you're happy to hook competitively? It's a safety issue, if you feel uncomfortable we'll go to uncontested scrums"
-- "I don't feel comfortable"
Robson's first lineout couldn't have gone much worse!
Really pleased to see Umaga trying things and playing in a way we'd like him to rather than having gone into his shell after the Sale game.
Trying to figure out the permutations for the last 4 rounds:
-- We've got Sarries (A), Tigers (H), Bears (H) and Chiefs (H)
-- Bears have got Warriors (A), Saints (H), Wasps (H), Irish (A)
-- Sale have got Tigers (A), Sarries (H), Bath (H) and Warriors (H)
-- Bath have got Quins (A), Warriors (H), Sale (A), Sarries (A)
-- Saints have got Chiefs (H), Bears (A), Tigers (A), Gloucs (A)
We've got a potentially horrible run-in, with Tigers the only likely victory the way Sarries, Bears and Chiefs are playing. We might get lucky and get a Bears B team but think they'll target us with a full strength team. Chiefs may also rotate all players to save themselves for the play-offs by the time we play them if they've cemented top position (they pretty much already have with a 14 point margin over Sale) - but the way their B-Team took apart Bristols A-Team doesn't fill me with confidence.
Sale and Bath both have Warriors and also each other. You'd think they'd both pick up 5 points against Warriors, then take 4 points from their game (although we can dream of a 3-3 draw in a very wet Manchester) and Warriors can be tricky opponents.
I don't think Saints will get much from their last 3 games - Tigers perhaps their major scalp. Gloucs will want to go out with a bang and Chiefs and Bears will be wanting to solidify their positions for the next couple of rounds.
Bears perhaps have the easiest run-in. You'd think even with a rotated team they'd beat Warriors and Irish, probably Saints and then have a full-strength team for us.
Looking at the fixtures, I think 4th is all to play for between us and Bath. Need to pray that Quins turn up at home as not sure we'll get much, if anything out of an away trip to Sarries with the likes of Lima, Taylor, Oghre and Young all likely out injured (perhaps not Lima) but you'd suspect Young and Oghre are out due to failing their HIA's and Taylor clearly crocked. Hopefully it's a minor sprain, but he rolled it pretty nastily.
Jacob has played a fair bit of rugby as has Kibirige and Robson. Launch, Wills and Shields all played the full 80 today in a bruising game, same with West and Fekitoa. Tom Willis had a near full-on game too.
Nerves will be shot by the time R22 comes around!