Harlequins vs. London Irish

[Scrumhead]

I wasn’t go to do a thread, but in dry conditions with two exciting sets of backs, I’m hoping for a good game.

Setting off for the Stoop shortly.

Quins:

1. Marler
2. Ward (c)
3. Sinckler
4. Matthews
5. South
6. Luamanu
7. Robshaw
8. Clifford
9. Care
10. Smith
11. Visser
12. Saili
13. Marchant
14. Walker
15. Brown

16. Gray 17. Lambert 18. Collier 19. Merrick 20. White 21. Lewis 22. Lang 23. Alofa

London Irish:

1. Franks
2. Paice
3. Hoskins
4. Van der Merwe (c)
5. McNally
6. Schatz
7. Northcote-Green
8. Treviranus
9. Van Zyl
10. Brophy-Clews
11. Lewington
12. Williams
13. Fowlie
14. Cokanasiga
15. Marshall

16. Porecki 17. Reid 18. Du Plessis 19. De Chaves 20. Basham 21. Steele 22. Bell 23. Tikoirotuma

Quins will be our to avenge our opening day defeat to Irish and with the exception of the second row, we’ve got one of the best 23s out we’ve had in a while.

It’s inevitable we’ll concede tries though and Lewington and Cokanasiga vs. Visser and Walker has potential to be a good battle.

Good to see Clifford starting too.

[fivepointer]

Currently Irish are leading 25-0.
Either Quins have clocked off for the season already, or irish really have turned a corner.

[fivepointer]

Bloody hell!
irish win with a try BP.
Unfortunately for them Worcester have beaten Newcastle. 9 pts in it at the bottom now.

[Scrumhead]

Honestly, that was possibly the worst Quins performance I’ve ever seen in person. Truly dreadful.

[kk67]

Currently Irish are leading 25-0.
Either Quins have clocked off for the season already, or irish really have turned a corner.

Seems amazing since they just gave away Blair Cowan.

[Puja]

Bloody hell!
irish win with a try BP.
Unfortunately for them Worcester have beaten Newcastle. 9 pts in it at the bottom now.

Frankly, I think they're more likely to catch Northampton if anybody. However they'd need 11 points to overtake them (as opposed to 10 to get over Worcester), so that's effectively winning all three remaining games to get to anyone. Their next two are against Exeter and Saracens. See you in 19-20 Irish (maybe).

Puja

[Stom]

Kinda looks like Kennedy was holding them back... Shame. TBC, Lewington, Williams, Fowlie, Cokanasiga, Marshall is a great backline.

But Quins. You know there's a Kingston out petition now? Thus happened last time he was DoR.

[Stom]

And it was the closest to our best team we've had in a while, so there's really no excuse.

[Mikey Brown]

Aye. Horrendous result. Horwill and maybe Chisholm aside that is the team I’ve wanted for a while.

[Scrumhead]

Yep. No excuses from a squad point of view. Horwill and James Chisholm might have made a difference in terms of appetite and desire but I don’t think it would have changed the results.

It almost looks as though they are playing to engineer a change at the top.

[Mikey Brown]

Yeah I wasn’t suggesting they’d have turned it around. More that we have very few excuses for being so shite. Horwill makes an enormous difference to the side along with Robshaw, but even with them in the side we fairly routinely fall apart.

[Scrumhead]

Exactly. Another observation was a massive lack of leadership on the pitch despite having our current and most recent club captains all in the starting lineup. No-one looked like they were even trying to rally the side. We just looked completely apathetic.

Horwill and Chisholm May have made a difference there.

[Bloggs]

I’ve been withholding from going full on Kingston Out, but this season has just not been good enough at all. If he won’t make changes to his coaching staff, then the board need to make the change to his position. This squad is too talented to be performing so poorly

[fivepointer]

9th place unlikely to go higher and a pretty disastrous Champions Cup campaign arent a great return. Only Saints and Worcester have conceded more points. In fairness they have had more injuries than most, but you'd have to say things need a major shake up for next season.

[Scrumhead]

We’ll be lucky to stay in 9th. I genuinely can’t see us getting any more points this season.

We are bad on the road and we’re up against Gloucester and Worcester away who are both good at home. Both have the attacking game to really hurt us so I can easily see them getting bonus point wins against us with very little chance of us scoring enough points to get a losing bonus point.

We finish at home against Exeter who will most likely be looking to cement a home semi final. If we can’t raise our game against London Irish (who we have no excuse to lose to), I can only see us totally rolling over against Exeter. I can hear it now from JK: “we looked very good in training, but there’s no disgrace in losing to a team as strong as the Chiefs”.

I don’t see Worcester beating Wasps next round, but it’s entirely possible they can get the 5 points they need to leapfrog us when’s we play them and they’re definitely capable of beating Saints in the final round of games.

Saints could easily leapfrog us too.

I genuinely don’t see where our points are coming from so 11th is definitely possible, if not quite likely.