[shimmieandshake]

London Irish:
15 James Stokes, 14, Ben Loader, 13 Curtis Rona, 12 Theo Brophy Clews, 11 Ollie Hassell-Collins, 10 Paddy Jackson, 9 Ben Meehan, 1 Will Goodrick-Clarke, 2 Agustin Creevy, 3 Lovejoy Chawatama, 4 Steve Mafi, 5 Rob Simmons, 6 Matt Rogerson (c), 7 Blair Cowan, 8 Albert Tuisue.

Replacements:
16 Matt Cornish, 17 Facundo Gigena, 18 Ollie Hoskins, 19 George Nott, 20 Ben Donnell, 21 Nick Phipps, 22 Will Joseph, 23 Tom Homer.


Worcester:
15 Nick David, 14 Perry Humphreys, 13 Francois Venter, 12 Ashley Beck, 11 Tom Howe, 10 Billy Searle, 9 Francois Hougaard, 1 Ethan Waller, 2 Niall Annett, 3 Conor Carey, 4 Andrew Kitchener, 5 Justin Clegg, 6 Ted Hill (C), 7 Matt Kvesic, 8 Joe Batley.

Replacements | 16 Isaac Miller, 17 Marc Thomas, 18 Nick Schonert, 19 Tom Dodd, 20 Cornell du Preez, 21 Gareth Simpson, 22 Fin Smith, 23 Oli Morris.


Good that Theo's fit. Intrigued to see what Gigena brings off the bench. Should be very combative/physical in the back row.

[Margin_Walker]

Makes sense as a squad. Probably the strongest we could field, barring unavailable players, which is what you need against a Worcester team that usually beat us.

On the main BT channel as well 2 weeks in a row. What's the world coming to?

[shimmieandshake]

Ha, yes; back-to-back TV attention for us is probably the weirdest thing to happen in the last year or so across the globe.

[GC89]

Pretty nervous about this one, but about as strong a team as we could field. Pleased Gigena is on the bench as Dell has dropped off again after some improvements in the Autumn.

[Narbia]

Hmm, I hope PJ gets his good kicking boots on, and BM gets the ball out wide for the back 3 to do some running, because the history of arm-wrestles against WW doesn't appear favourably for us.

[GHA]

PJ certainly had his kicking boots at the end, and Blair was wearing his tackling scrum cap.

Is everyone as furious with the officials as the other place seems to be?

[Stevie J]

The penalty count apparently was 16 to 3. Whatever you can be pinged for in Rugby Union, we got pinged for it. Some were soft (Mafi in the line out, Albert rolling away but erm, not sufficiently and Ollies attempted interception come to mind) but none were egregious. After a point we were clearly on Pearce’s bad side and we couldn’t change our behaviour. I’m more disappointed in us than him.

The scrum went to pot after Will and Lovejoy departure but on the positive side of the ledger was the insane defensive effort of Blair.

Meanwhile Worcester, for all their blunt possession were very good at keeping it phase after phase and forcing us to make those bad decisions or kick it out, giving them possession right back.

I’m not sure what happened in the changing rooms at half time but clearly our talk didn’t work! A lot of the players looked tired well before full time. I’d really be in favour of some mass changes for next week, we had that break without games but it’s been full on ever since.

[Margin_Walker]

PJ certainly had his kicking boots at the end, and Blair was wearing his tackling scrum cap.

Is everyone as furious with the officials as the other place seems to be?

Not me. Thought Pearce was okay, There were a few frustrating calls (two knock ons that weren't off the top of my head), but nothing to get too upset about.

We were defending in our 22 the whole game, you're going to concede penalties. On another day he might have binned OHC or had a closer look at a few tackles, so it's swings and roundabouts.

Really odd game. I kept thinking any minute we were going to get an opportunity to have some ball in their half. Then about 10 mins after HT it dawned on me that we just weren't going to get any ball.

Team showed real character to win that.

[Heaf]

Sorry I have to disagree about the officiating ... apart from the imaginary knock-ons against LI (one of which was replayed several times but the TMO kept quiet for once) he missed several forward passes, let Wuss seal off rucks regularly, pinged LI for holding on within a millisecond whilst watching an LI player tug at the ball for seconds before getting cleared out, allowed Wuss to throw most line-outs almost straight to the 9, pinged Paddy when a Wuss player fell over him as he was getting up 3m from a ruck whilst letting Wuss players regularly get in the way of our 9s and almost let them score a try by a player crawling along the ground, if he had made it to the line it would have been interesting to see if it would have been allowed.

Of course I could be wrong, but that's just my thoughts on first viewing.

[Heaf]

Add a missed high tackle on TBC to the list ...

[Narbia]

Absolutely relentless attack by WW in the 2nd half - which really should come as a surprise to no one.

Yet again, we managed to break with 'old' LI and grind that win out. Apparently we put in something like 5X the number of tackles as done by WW.

Mafi was great. PJ on song, and Blair never-say-die Cowan just a few of those that put their hands up today.

A rotation big-style may be needed for next week to rest those guys.

Edit : It's Sale away next. Full scale rotation could be in order as we've nothing to gain from that one. Unless Sale have a 'mare, it's a home win.

Edit 2 : @Hsmith18 you wrote what I was thinking, as I was typing it.

[Hsmith18]

Sale will be very physical next week so some of those forwards will have to be rotated. Hopefully SOB is available, perhaps start with donnel too. Mafi really needs a rest as well

[SixNineOne]

The commentators on the SN message board have been absolutely incandescent about the officiating, before degenerating into their normal bout of name calling. All they could see was Wuss players sealing off and holding on, whilst we apparently were pinged for even thinking about transgressing. What I could see was a weak TMO who should have intervened more consistently, and a referee who was becoming increasingly frustrated by our inability to adapt to his style of adjudication. Coming into this match, Worcester had one of the lowest penalty counts in the league whilst we gave away 20+ penalties last week, so I’m not in the slightest bit surprised to see a penalty count of 16 against 4, particularly as we were defending for 80% of the game. I’m immensely proud of the effort and application that went into that defensive shift and in seasons gone by we’d have capitulated long before the final whistle. But two things worry me. First, we didn’t seem to have any strategy for shifting from defence into attack, simply allowing them to run at us, confident that our defence was better than their woeful scoring ability. My second concern is how much that game will have taken out of our key players. Blair’s tackle count was insane, but there was also a long list of others who were in the 20+ bracket, including TBC at 27. Next week we’re up against Sale, a very physical side, and I suspect we’re going to have to rest a few players - hopefully SO’B is fit to take on the 7 shirt and I think Albert may need a rest, as he looked very tired today. Similarly, Steve Mafi and Rob Simmons put in another big shift, so it may have to be a light training week and a few changes in the starting line-up.

[GC89]

I actually also thought the refereeing was pretty poor. There were a few decisions against Albert that were incredibly frustrating and didn't seem to be anything that Worcester weren't doing at most rucks when we had possession. We definitely didn't help ourselves at times, but I thought Pearce (who I usually rate) wasn't at his best.

In terms of our own performance, I was pretty frustrated at full time, but now that the dust has settled it is quite pleasing to be able to say we got a result from that. As others have said, if we had played like that a few seasons ago we would have lost by a hefty margin. It is hard to be too critical of a side that seems to have broken some Premiership defensive records. For whatever reason, things didn't click in a lot of aspects of our play, but the players put their bodies on the line and deserve a lot of credit.

I agree that a lot of players look like they need a rest (Albert is a bit below where he was last season for instance) and even some who still look pretty fresh (Rogerson and Paddy by way of example) could also possibly do with a break. I'm not really one for throwing games, but I can't see much to be gained from an away trip to Sale, other than a 5-0 defeat and a load of injuries. However, I don't think we have that sort of mentality and expect we will go full throttle.

[GHA]

Can the TMO intervene on knock-ons etc, or are they restricted just to foul play? If it's just foul play that would explain the poor TBC decision..?

[Heaf]

I previously thought it was limited when they could intervene, but recently they seem to be chiming in all the time so it must have changed.

[Warrior7]

From a Wuss perspective, there were a few dodgy calls from Pearce against us as well - although he wasn't to blame for the loss of course.
Namely Loader going for Batley when he didn't have the ball (Loader didn't even attempt to go for it) right near your try-line, players lying on the ball off feet to slow it down (I don't think Tuisue was ever supporting his own bodyweight at any of the breakdowns) and the yellow card probably took a few more penalties than it should have done. If you're angry about the ref I'd recommend listening to the commentary from Ben Kay regarding some harsh decisions against us.

Agreed about sealing off though, but sadly every team does it (including LI, and we've finally cottoned on!). Exeter are by far the worst team for it IMO. Was trying to find a clip of Cobus Reinach knocking the ball out of Ethan Waller's hands preventing a certain try last season vs Northampton - that was given as a knock-on instead of a penalty try. At least the refs are reasonably consistent in that regard (r.e. Brophy-Clews) although I agree it is frustrating.

Your defence was incredible today, especially the organisation after clean breaks. I kept hoping for you guys to tire but it never happened. Well played and good luck for the rest of the season!

[Iron Lung]

I thought we could have played a bit smarter when we had the ball. Given that the breakdown seemed to favour the attacking team which made turnovers extremely hard to achieve, keeping the ball in hand rather than kicking it away would have given our defence some breathing space.

We did this in the run up to Paddy's monster penalty but before that we kicked most possession away.

Having said that, the defensive effort was like nothing I've ever seen. The closest I can think of is our game at Falcons in our first relegation season. We were parked on their try line for what felt like the entire second half but couldn't break through.