Fortunately I was driving
Sunday 12th March: Anglo-Welsh Cup semi-final: Exeter Chiefs v Harlequins & Sandy Park, Exeter, kick-off 3.00pm: Result – Exeter Chiefs 24 Harlequins 7.
Yesterday, after lunch at the conclusion of a four-day stint staying with my nonagenarian father, I was sitting with my parent and his carer watching Spurs play Millwall on BBC1 in the FA Cup whilst my other half went around the house collecting her stuff together further our return drive to London. As the clock ticked on towards 3.00pm – with permission from my companions I hasten to add – I switched to BT Sport 1 in order to watch the run-up to the above match.
Eventually The Boss appeared, at last ready to depart and, dear reader, it was no hardship at all for me to jump to my feet, bid everyone farewell, leave the house and set off on the two hour journey home.
Judging by the overnight media reports and the match thread on the fans’ unofficial website Come All Within, this was just yet another abject away performance by the men in metaphorical multi-coloured quartered shirts to add to all those other ones that our long-suffering fans have been subjected to this season. [I use the word ‘metaphorical’ above because of course these days when ‘on the road’ we don’t even play in multi-coloured or indeed quartered shirts].
I’m content to report here that I was more than glad to have missed it because there’s only so much that a fan can take.
At the pre-semi final stage of this very-much third-rate priority during our 150th season – for which the club management had devised a well-organised and fitting year-long series of celebratory events (not!) – the prospect of going all the way and appearing in the Final due to take place at the Stoop on Sunday 19th March was our last chance of silverware, and indeed anything else, (at least in theory) and therefore, for the diehards, a straw worth clutching at.
We then cocked up our next game, thereby losing our hoped-for home advantage in the semi and instead had to proceed to the wastelands of the West Country to take on the solid, developing, hard-nosed and flying-high-in-the-Premiership table Chiefs – a formidable lot to face at the best of times.
Yesterday the inevitable happened. As expected by everyone connected with Quins (starting with the fans), in a one-sided game the home team’s impressive and ‘slightly under the radar in terms of national recognition’ players duly dispatched the mish-mash of a squad that we’d sent down there.
Let’s register the excuses first (we’ve had a lot of practice recently).
We have a significant number of players away on Six Nations duty. We have a lot of key players injured at various states of returning fitness and therefore unavailable. And we have some academy players and journeyman first team squadders who are not yet (or never will be) really ready to face exposure to English elite first team rugby.
The above are being trotted out on a weekly basis to anyone who will listen by the coaching staff, presumably expecting to be taken seriously, and also being offered through gritted teeth by the supporters whenever they are not moaning about the coaching staff.
The truth yesterday was that our ‘mixed bag of young, those returning from being injured and … er … ‘whomever we can find on the training paddock who might need or want a game’ had (by some margin) the older average age of the two teams.
Back in the good old days – when the callow playing staff and academy overseen by Dean Richards (and taken developed further by Conor O’Shea) was playing exciting, attacking, off-loading, dynamic, audacious, attacking rugby from literally anywhere on the pitch – a similar line (i.e. that “We’re young and developing, and inevitably bound to come unstuck from time to time, but bear with us …”) was sometimes deployed. But it was then actually true and nobody minded, not least because – win or lose – every Quins game was full of excitement and entertainment. There was such a buzz abroad at the club that for three or four days before a home game we fans could scarcely think about anything else but getting down there early on match day.
These only buzz to be heard down at the Stoop these days is that of fans’ fingernails being bitten at high speed and their teeth being ground to dust.
The atmosphere at the ground is ‘dead’ and now even the players are just going through the motions. Don’t get me wrong, they put the effort in and perform to the systems coached with efficiency because they’re professional sportsmen, but their body language is poor, their confidence is lacking and you can tell they don’t really know where the impetus and ideas to get out of this hole are going to come from.
The best analogy I can give is that right now the Stoop is like a British car factory three months after it’s been announced that the company has been bought by a foreign owner and that, as part of the ‘rationalisation’ in the aftermath of the take-over, a third of the workforce is going to be made redundant.
The only difference, of course, is that nobody in management will be made redundant. Knowing Quins, they’ll probably all be given a 15% hike in salary and awarded another two junior management staff each to help them do their onerous work.
Right now the best that Quins fans have to look forward to is that the end of the season is at last coming into view on the horizon and it won’t be long before we can all have a welcome break from the stress and frustration.
