More of the same it seems
Any Rust reader who has ever been a long-term sporting club supporter will find familiar my current state of combined anguish, dread and hope as the Harlequins enter their last few weeks of pre-season prior to the launch of the 2016/2017 Aviva Premiership season on 3rd September.
I shan’t bother you with a detailed recap. Suffice it to mention that following the revival of Quins’ playing fortunes under new head coach Conor O’Shea post-Bloodgate – culminating in the never-to-be forgotten 2012 winning of the Premiership title – the seasons since have been uniformly disappointing.
My mantra last term was that ‘if you ain’t going forwards, you’re actually going backwards’ and, for whatever reasons, the unpalatable truth is that we first stood still and then began going backwards as others – most particularly Saracens, Exeter Chiefs, Leicester Tigers and latterly (once they decamped to Coventry) Wasps – took incremental strides towards greater excellence [and let’s leave issues such as salary cap breaches and rugby politics out of this for now].
Whether this was because we got complacent or simply lost our way, or Conor was not up to it, or under the salary cap the club couldn’t (or wasn’t willing) to put sufficient resources on the table, who can say? One thing for sure: over the attritional slog of a European rugby union season with its attendant issues of fatigue, injuries and player burn-out – not forgetting the Six Nations and autumn international windows when your very best home-grown players may be called to higher things – as night follows day, every Premiership club intent upon challenging for honours needs forty-plus sound first-team-capable players. Getting by on good fortune allied to a few seasoned vets and over-promoted academy kids – as Quins attempted to do – just doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. Especially when, for the most part, in the field of mercenary acquisitions our ratio of hits and misses failed to better 50:50.
To be frank, the last season and a half at Quins have been more than disappointing – they’ve been frustrating to the point of disillusionment. Running up to the 2012 Premiership we were on a roll. Our young guns and style of play didn’t quite sweep all before them every time they took the field but there was a confidence and swagger in our work that lifted the heart and made you proud even when we had a reverse or two.
No longer is that the case. Since 2012 a stall – or, as I hinted above – perhaps just a decline. From October 2014 onwards (I remember that date vividly) we ‘lost our mojo’ and never got it back. Through the remainder of 2014/2015 and then the entirety of 2015/2016 we rarely played as if we meant it. Okay, we went through the motions – we trucked it up, flew into the collisions, made every effort, strained every sinew – but magic spark was there little or none. Quins no longer played like a top four team and last season fell outside the top six and therefore qualification by right into the European Champions Cup for 2016/2017. We had no game-changers, no threat of midfield penetration and seemingly no confidence at all. And you need confidence to play in what we used to call ‘the Quins way’ – last term it had gone completely AWOL.
And so to this season – the 150th anniversary of the founding of the club in Hampstead. Plenty of plans have been made to celebrate and mark the occasion, not all of them to my satisfaction or approval. The club’s executives and management have made great plans but some of them are cack-handed or feeble. It seems that not only the playing squad has lost verve and momentum.
After much soul-searching and prevarication, I eventually decided to renew my season ticket – but only because it was the 150th anniversary and I’ll be 65 by the end of the season, which seems an appropriate dual-milestone upon which to bow out. If it was just down to my desire to watch Quins play another season, I might well have taken a different decision – it’s a form of masochism to watch your team in the flesh playing badly week after week. I could do that acceptably well on the telly, frankly, and save myself the bother.
Some things have changed during the pre-season. Veteran Number 8 Nick Easter began by adding coaching to his playing role but then decided to retire and concentrate on coaching. A plain talker is our Nick. In announcing this news he gave an interview in which he effectively admitted that Quins’s failure to kick on since 2012 was entirely self-inflicted – players and coaches had both suffered from terminal complacency.
And so yesterday I went down to the Stoop with about 5,000 or 6,000 other souls for the first public per-season match – the annual Cunningham Duncombe shield game with London Irish, newly-relegated to the Championship at the end of 2015/2016.
These pre-season contests are an acquired taste. None of the players is quite going all out for fear of getting injured before the ‘off’. Ring-rust abounds and team work is sporadic. Often there’s a snowstorm of substitutions on both sides – sometimes on a ‘rolling’ basis. In short, they’re set up to disappoint the paying punter. That said, at least it’s an opportunity to get down to the Stoop and check how sleek and fit the boys are looking, give one’s new replica shirt an airing and hopefully build some anticipatory excitement for the beginning of the season proper.
In all of those senses, yesterday’s fare was about par for the course.
The game was a dud. One team on display was Premiership-standard and the other was not. Sadly, however, it was London Irish, dressed in black, that had some seriously-impressive new acquisitions (most of them Pacific Islanders) on show and deservedly ran out winners by 28 points to 12, scoring four tries in the process.
In contrast Quins were lacklustre to the point of poor. They launched barely a single line-breaking back-line move all game. There was plenty of huff and puff from the forwards, all of it countered and more by the visitors’ rock-solid defence.
The plusses were painfully few. I liked what I saw of Aaron Morris, our classy new full back acquired from Saracens. At centre Harry Sloan put himself about a bit – but then he needs to have a big season this term in order to prove his top-flight credentials. Winger Henry Cheeseman looked keen. None of the starting forwards particularly distinguished themselves, though James Chisholm made some dents when he came on in the second half.
Lock Charlie Matthews (another who urgently needs to kick on) still seemed a tad under-powered and retired hurt with a head/shoulder injury that might be serious less than two minutes into the second half.
All in all, this Quins outing fuelled their supporters’ worst fears. On this showing, things ain’t going to get better anytime soon.
Ah well, next Saturday afternoon it’s our other pre-season friendly at the Stoop against Glasgow Warriors.
On the one hand, you might argue, things cannot get much worse.
On the other – even though I’ve got tickets – and depending upon what else is happening at home and on the television that day, I might just give it a miss.
After all, if you’re not enjoying something, why inflict it upon yourself?
