User avatar
By Stevie J
#9431
S*d the Six Nations rubbish, Premiership Rugby is back and a short trip down the A316.

What's everyones thought to this one? Quins will likely have the bulk of the team that smashed Sarries and a youngish Exeter in the Premiership Cup Semi Final and will only likely miss Marler and Sinckler. We should have Dell back in the fold as Scotland will need to replace him.

Our away form, outside of the Worcester match, has been pretty good. Will 2 weeks and a sunny training camp beat a Quins team thats rounded into some form of late?
By GC89
#9434
Quins have found some form, but if we turn up as we did against Saints we can push anybody. Hopefully we will have some returnees. I would go with:

1. Elrington
2. Porecki
3. Kepu
4. Van der Merwe
5. Coleman
6. Rogerson
7. Cowan
8. Tuisue

9. Meehan
10. Myler
11. OHC
12. Hepetema
13. Rona
14. Naholo
15. Stokes

Bench: Fainga'a, Hobbs-Awoyemi, Hoskins, Mafi, Curtis-Harris, Phipps, Jackson(?), Loader(?)
By Florida
#9459
No idea, absolutely none. We showed against Northampton that on our day we're going to pose a big problem for just about anyone, but we've also shown that when it's not our day we're woeful.

Sadly I've no idea what team will turn up, hopefully it'll be the one that downed Northampton, but we'll see.

Sounds like we've got a few players returning from injury, so looking forward to the team announcement.
User avatar
By Stevie J
#9490
Harlequins vs London Irish
@ Twickenham Stoop
Referee: JP Doyle
Assistant referees: Mike Hudson, Greg Macdonald
Television match official: Sean Davey
By Florida
#9550
Stevie J wrote:
Wed Feb 12, 2020 3:21 pm
Harlequins vs London Irish
@ Twickenham Stoop
Referee: JP Doyle
Assistant referees: Mike Hudson, Greg Macdonald
Television match official: Sean Davey
It does make me chuckle how we're the Not Nots at all times, except when JPD is reffing, then we suddenly become Irish.
User avatar
By Stevie J
#9552
Florida - if we win, I can sure bet we will get a few comments about how its unfair JP refs us...! :pray:
User avatar
By Stevie J
#9559
https://www.rugbypass.com/news/dombrand ... -in-battle
That “everyone” includes Ireland international Sean O’Brien, one of the club’s major summer signings who is still battling to overcome injury. The good news for tenth-placed Irish is that the flanker could be in the mix in a month which makes the second half of the season really significant even if the threat of relegation has been removed due to Saracens’ fall from grace. A fit-again O’Brien allied to the summer move to their new home at the Brentford stadium makes this an exciting time for the club.
By Margin_Walker
#9566
Great to have Loader back and will be interesting to see how he gets on at 15. Played there plenty at U18s, so not completely new to him.

London Irish:
15 Ben Loader, 14 Waisake Naholo, 13 Curtis Rona, 12 Terrence Hepetema, 11 Ollie Hassell-Collins, 10 Stephen Myler, 9 Ben Meehan, 1 Harry Elrington, 2 Dave Porecki, 3 Sekope Kepu, 4 Franco van der Merwe ©, 5 Adam Coleman, 6 Matt Rogerson, 7 Blair Cowan, 8 Albert Tuisue

Replacements:
16 Ben Atkins, 17 Allan Dell, 18 Ollie Hoskins, 19 Steve Mafi, 20 Ben Donnell, 21 Nick Phipps, 22 Matt Williams, 23 James Stokes
By GC89
#9579
Happy with Loader at 15. I saw him there for the England 18s a few times and he looked very good. My only concern is I don't like moving players who are excelling in one position around. However, this way we get far more pace into the back three and have all of our best backs on the pitch (barring Jackson). Very exciting!
User avatar
By Stevie J
#9581
My only fear with Loader in the 15 shirt is with another storm (Storm Dennis, apparently...) this weekend that the weather may impact him under the high ball. He of course equally may be a revelation.

Certainly Ollie's try scoring form means you really can't take him out the squad so if it works, it could be dynamite.
By GC89
#9582
Loader has always struck me as decent under the high ball when on the wing. But agreed, the weather could make things a bit tricky for him.
By Florida
#9584
Its also a bit of a shame for Stokes as he's really been growing into the team.

Popped onto the Quins board earlier, seems their team is weaker than they were hoping for. Still looks pretty decent if you ask me, hopefully we can get on top of their fowards and make it difficult for their backs to get decent ball.
User avatar
By Narbia
#9596
Anyone going?

Fair play to Quins they can sell the place out.

I also noticed some favourable comments about the new Brentford LI prices on the Quins board

Looks like they'll pick up some passing trade when Quins are playing away, and Irish are at home.

However. #COYI
User avatar
By Narbia
#9629
Only been following texts, but it seems LI handled the dreadful weather better than Quins.

:dance: :clap:
User avatar
By Stevie J
#9633
We handled the conditions pretty well overall. First half with the wind we were able to pin Quins deep and took our chances against a defence that was far too spaced out allowing us to get behind twice. Second half the onslaught came on but the Quins bench outside of Care didn’t off too much.

Donnell continues to look classy, just goes about his business and looks to the manor born at this level. Starting with less than an hours notice? No problem.

Loader did fine at 15. Too heavy underfoot sadly to see how that could have had a major impact on our counter attacking.
By Florida
#9635
Superb result. Conditions we're woeful, yet we handled them well. A little worried about our replacement props as they got taken to the cleaners. Other than that though it was excellent.

First time this season we've won two games in a row. Hopefully we can kick on and make it three!
By GHA
#9644
I'm going to moan about the ref briefly for old time's sake. Quins' first try came from the AR calling a penalty for offside. JP didn't know who it was against or what it was for, so suggesting the Irish player (Rogerson?) knowingly played the ball from an offside position is very harsh, and then to allow Quins to take a quick tap when no-one including JP himself quite knew what was going on was a bit harsh. Should've been scrum Quins for accidental offside IMO.

Second Quins try, the last camera angle clearly showed that least one forward pass but Davey and JP had already made their minds up from seeing the first two angles, unfortunately.

But enough of that, I thought we were awesome. Very few missed tackles, handling and kicking were pretty good given the conditions, the two first half tries showed a bit of efficiency and clinical finishing that we've missed in previous seasons. Third try was luck, and fourth try was deserved seeing as we've seen those scored against us for years and years.

I was pleased Care was on the bench for 47 minutes but I thought we nullified the threats of Dombrandt, Smith and Lasike superbly. The amount of dominant tackles was top drawer.

I'm assuming we won the toss..?!

Great stuff :drunk:
By GHA
#9646
Also I nearly cried when Hassell-Collins didn't put Stokes in under the posts when he made that late break - thought the TBP was gone...

And as Florida said, replacement front row didn't exactly win the battle at scrum time. But FVDM and Coleman looked like Casey and Kennedy in the lineout at time
User avatar
By Narbia
#9647
In this 2020 season after 10 games we have 4 wins and 22 points and 12 games to go.

After 22 games in 2018 we had 3 wins and 22 points. 12th position

After 22 games in 2016 we had 4 wins and 20 points. 12th position.

After 22 games in 2015 we had 7 wins and 40 points. 10th position. That's the realistic minimum we should be aspiring to. :thinking: :)
By Margin_Walker
#9655
Well I'm feeling pretty positive after that. Back to back away wins and the lads really applied themselves when they could have let Quins back into it against the wind in that second half. A key moment for me was the three lineout steals in a row that marched them back up the pitch from our corner. Feels like the club is really moving forward for the first time in a long time.

Coleman, Rogerson and Rona were the pick of the players for me, but there were lots of good performances.

Edit - Also a word for Ben Donnell. 19 and his first Prem start. Made more tackles than anyone on the pitch (16 made/1 missed)
By GC89
#9673
Donnell was superb. His workrate was through the roof. If he can fill out a bit more so that he can make more of an impact in attack he will be some player.

Also delighted to see Rona coming good and offering a threat in attack.

The real positive for me was that victory was founded on heart and effort. It feels like there is still a lot more to come in terms of fluidity and an attacking style (noting the awful conditions would have played a part yesterday).
By Ecksile
#9684
"Donnell was superb. His workrate was through the roof. If he can fill out a bit more so that he can make more of an impact in attack he will be some player."

Did make me smile, he's 19 years old is 6' 6" tall and weighs 108kgs :)
By GC89
#9685
Wasn't meant to be a criticism. He obviously has the right physical materials, just think it will take him a couple of years to add the muscle to win collisions in attack.
By GHA
#9712
Annoyingly it's such a nice read it's made it into the Premium section of the Telegraph website
By Florida
#9718
GHA wrote:
Mon Feb 17, 2020 3:20 pm
Annoyingly it's such a nice read it's made it into the Premium section of the Telegraph website
Not sure if they still do it, but when I registered they gave me free access to one premium article a week (no subscription needed for it).
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