This weekends Aviva Premiership round has been the most unpredictable since Ive started following the tournament. On Friday Bath has defeated Saracens at home. Whilst it has not been a very unexpected result (Ive even predicted Baths win on Superbru contest), the unusual thing was that Sarries got only 11 points and lost 10, thus, having left without any table points at all and eventually dropping to the 3rd place - theyve never been outside of the top 2 for more than 2 seasons. Quins defeating Welsh was not a surprise, as well as Saints winning in Reading, given that Irish have already got a surprise win in Leicester one weekend before (and Irish are very rare to win to games in a row in Premiership in general, not talking about defeating two teams from Big Four in succession) - but it has still been surprising that Irish have managed to get the losing bonus, whereas Saints have missed the try bonus. But the biggest shock of the day was the game in Gloucester - hosts, having started the season quite unevenly, have demolished Tigers 33:16 (and its been 33:9 in the middle of the second half). Since Leicester has conceded the sensational loss at home to Irish last weekend, this result has been even more unexpected. And it makes next week maximally hard for Quins who are just about to visit Welford Road and who havent lost any regular season games to Tigers in the last two seasons. Sunday has continued this crazy weekend in style - whilst Sale defeating Wasps at home was not a big surprise (although still, Sale had won only against the doomed Welsh so far, whereas Wasps have been the only team to this moment to defeat the ruling champions and have just narrowly missed against both Quins and Sarries), the game in Newcastle has become the superb addition to the previous oddities. While Welsh have been preparing to the next rounds game against Falcons as their potentially last chance to claim theyre not the ultimate relegation candidates, the latter have amazingly claimed their first win of the season against Exeter who have been really convincing so far. More so, Chiefs machine gun Gareth Steenson has managed to miss three conversions of three in the first half - the fact which arguably cost them the game, as Newcastle won only 5 points. Even so, Chiefs are still 4th. And, while weve been horrified by Quins being 9th before this round, now its time for Tigers fans to be even in deeper shock - Leicester is 10th, ahead of only the two losers of the first rounds, Newcastle and Welsh. Last time theyve had more losses than wins after 5 rounds was three seasons ago, with 2 wins and 3 losses, just like now. And in the 6th round of that tournament Tigers have... hosted Quins at Welford Road. That game was won by Quins, and later the same two teams have met (the only time in Premiership history so far) in the final game on Twickenham.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 22:00:48 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015