The Silly Season is finally over and the premiership returneth! Be praised that sanity has resumed!
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On a weekend when I couldn't see much due to the girlfriends house move, the international silly season was finally forgotten as domestic rugby resumed. Englands "Fallen heroes" [sic] returned to their clubs and the Premiership lit up again as the air warms and the ground hardens.
Thankfully the Virgin Media men arrived at the new house and had the ESPN working just in time for Quins vs Gloucester on Saturday (with barely minutes to spare), so enjoying all that HD loveliness was partially enjoyed over a sandwich lunch before more unpacking.
As for the rugby itself –
The first game of the weekend was Sale vs Leeds. Sale won, Leeds are going down. Nothing remotely interesting happened otherwise. Move along.
Oh, okay then, some more info… Steve Diamond is turning Sale into the Saracens of 7 years ago. And he's replaced a world cup winner with a journeyman sevens player. That's progressive thinking…
I'm glad I'm not a betting man. I also believe that this blog is something of a curse on a teams form. First I praise Newcastle then Gloucester pan them. Then I praise Gloucester and Quins Pan them… I'll go out on a whim here and say Leicester will pan Quins next week, because in my opinion, the toffs were fantastic. Even that horrible aggressive a-hole Mike Brown was tip top in the most one sided match of the weekend. Gloucester may well have been celebrating their LV= Cup a bit too hard this week and taken their eye off the ball, because a team with plenty of morale on the back of a 11 match winning streak (scoring 40+ tries in the process through the toughest portion of the season weather wise) doesn't just slump to the seasons biggest defeat. It simply doesn't happen! Quins wanted it more and were ruthless. Almost like when their pet hounds catch the fox. As they're still in with a faint chance of sneaking the playoffs, their tails will be up and they should look to kick on from here. Careful not to get too close to an excited Quins fan though, they may spill their champagne all over you.
In the other posh part of rugby, Tigers "mauled" Bath (oh come on, every blogger and clever journo uses that tired old tagline!) at the Rec. As a Saints fan who travelled down there to be on the receiving end of a pasting a few weeks ago, this made me have mixed emotions… Bath get put in their place (yay!), Bath come out with a worse +/- then they started the Saints game with (yay!), Tigers win (double boo!). What transpired is that Tigers are once again laying down the marker going into the end of the season, Bath have been taking advantage of weakened opposition during the international silly season instead of kicking on to be real contenders and Butch James is in fact a horrible little thug. Anthony Allen marked a strong case for inclusion in the World Cup squad, with his fantastic solo try being the match highlight, as he totally dominated Johnsons first choice Hape throughout. HMS Banahan was also anonymous.
Saturdays final match saw the Exiles host everybodys 2nd favourite team for this season. No, not the Ronan O'Gara horse whipping squad, I mean Exeter!
Apparently this one was something of a treat. Brothers Armitage Steffon and Petulant Twat ran the show for Irish as the hosts pulled out a lead before the "Premiership new boys" (another cliché tagline for you) came back and reduced the deficit to a single solitary point. Anyone who's followed Irishs' for this year knows that when they concede points away like that, it normally means they're about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. However this time (for once) they saw fit to behave like a rugby team and scored some more points, eventually running away with the weekends 3rd bonus point victory. Nick Kennedy immediately went on to tell the world how Mr. Angry is the greatest fullback the world has ever seen while Toby Booth could be seen in a background sitting comfortably in a black leather executive char, stroking a white Persian cat no less. Don't rule out the "Irish" (err, south sea islanders) just yet.
On Sunday, Saints hosted Wasps in a match overshadowed by the return of Josh Lewsey. Northampton, who've been ruddy awful since before Christmas if we're honest, had a "cup final" team out for the first time in what feels like forever and looked a completely different side for it whereas Toulouse-conquering Wasps didn't turn up. It appears Tony Hanks it seems was a fall guy for much deeper routed problems as the traditional end-of-season team were bullied like a team full of colts going up against the All Blacks. To their mercy however, Saints were stronger but still missing that cutting edge and that final pass. Too many times throughout the match (by both sides) the ball was knocked on, intercepted or passed straight into touch. Saints will have one eye on Ulster now with only the Sale match to put things right – no disrespect to Sale, but it will take a miracle or two for them to leave FG with the points this coming weekend if their recent form is any sort of judge. Wasps however have a lot of work to do – but then again, after Saints panned them at Adams Park they immediately bounced back with a BP win. Funny old game.
Saracens should have crushed Gosforth in Sundays other game, but by all accounts the most remarkable things to happen in Watford all weekend were Sarries "dropping one point instead of winning 4" due to stupid mistakes and Nigel Wray bleating at the RFU about the Super 15 game at Twickenham. I would say a lot of Sarries fans were upset about not picking up the BP, but Nigel Wray has claimed they were all at Twickenham so nobody was there… Speaking of which, I didn't see the "sensational" game at HQ as I was busy eating curry after the Saints match.
So Tigers extend their lead a bit, Gloucester fall behind Sarries, Saints climb back into the top 4 and the Premiership manoeuvres into formation for the run in.
My Team of the week: Tigers or Quins. Pick either and you'll likely make the wrong choice for the other.
Man of the Week: Nigel Wray – Keeping the Sarries mantra alive by bleating valid points with **** poor timing. Brendan Venters legacy lives on.
Weekends results in England:
Sale 15-12 Leeds Carnegie
Bath 6-37 Leicester
Harlequins 53-15 Gloucester
London Irish 39-17 Exeter
Northampton 39-3 Wasps
Saracens 24-9 Newcastle
Crusaders 44-28 Sharks
Peace
