AP- London Welsh vs Harlequins

Sunday 6th Jan, 15:00 at the Kassam Stadium, Oxford

From the London Welsh website:

London Welsh head coach Lyn Jones makes four changes to his squad ahead of Sunday’s round 13 Aviva Premiership fixture versus Harlequins at the Kassam Stadium. (Kick off 3:00PM)

The Welsh face a tough task against the reigning Aviva Premiership champions and will be hoping for a strong performance after a defeat at home to their local rivals London Wasps last weekend.

Jones makes three changes to this weeks starting line-up. Adam Balding gets the nod over Alfie To’oala who moves back to the bench. Paulica Ion returns to the starting line-up after being out with a knee injury, and Michael Hills comes in at starting open side to replace Mike Denbee.

The match day squad also sees the return of the influential Tyson Keates and the international experience of Tom Voyce.

London Welsh’s last outing against Harlequins resulted in heavy defeat at the start of the season. However the Exiles are a much improved team from the one that faced the Quins in September and will hope to use the home crowd to their advantage.

“We’ve taken on board a lot of lessons from our first game against Harlequins. We have progressed and developed as a side and have made great improvements in our discipline and our kicking game,” said Jones “We are aware they are a very confident side and are top of the League at the moment, we are disappointed after last week and are keen to make amends.”



London Welsh: 15. Tom Arscott, 14. Dan Caprice, 13. Seb Jewell, 12. Sonny Parker*, 11. Nick Scott, 10. Gordon Ross*, 9. Rob Lewis, 1. Frank Montanella*, 2. Neil Briggs, 3. Paulica Ion*, 4. Jonathon Mills ©, 5. Kirill Kulemin*, 6. Ed Jackson, 7. Michael Hills, 8. Adam Balding.
 
Replacements: 16. Greg Bateman, 17. Tom Bristow, 18. James Tideswell, 19. Matt Corker, 20. Alfie To’oala*, 21. Tyson Keates, 22. Alex Davies, 23. Tom Voyce.

Denotes full international

From Quins' website

Harlequins has announced the team to play London Welsh in Sunday's Aviva Premiership away match at the Kassam Stadium, Oxford, kick-off 3.00pm.There are six changes to the team that defeated London Irish in Big Game 5 at Twickenham Stadium last weekend. Among the backs Ollie Lindsay-Hague comes in for Mike Brown at full back, while Jordan Tuner-Hall and George Lowe form the centre partnership in place of Tom Casson and Matt Hopper, with the latter named on the bench. The final change in the back line sees Sam Smith taking over from Ugo Monye on the left wing.
In the forwards Charlie Matthews comes in for Olly Kohn in the second row while Tom Guest starts at blindside flanker in place of Maurie Fa'asavalu.

Harlequins Team:
15. Ollie Lindsay-Hague
14. Tom Williams
13. George Lowe
12. Jordan Turner-Hall
11. Sam Smith
10. Nick Evans
9. Danny Care
1. Joe Marler
2. Joe Gray
3. James Johnston
4. Charlie Matthews
5. George Robson
6. Tom Guest
7. Chris Robshaw (C)
8. Nick Easter

Replacements:
16. Rob Buchanan
17. Mark Lambert
18. Will Collier
19. Sam Twomey
20. Luke Wallace
21. Karl Dickson
22. Ben Botica
23. Matt Hopper

This'll be closer than the game at the Stoop, but it's nice to see us playing some more "fringe players". Botica and Wallace at least should both get on and nice to see JTH and Lowe brought back, the options at centre look tasty for a Horses/Courses approach. Matthews gets to show he can play Kohn's role and OLH is rewarded for that A league final performance. Hopefully there'll be some weather suitable for Quins style rugby. Also, in Quins news, Clegg is loaned out to Leeds. Hope he enjoys being 1st choice and the gametime there, best of luck to both.

Great to see Lowe and JTH back together again.
Spread the ball wide and fast, change the angle of attack and Quins will be fine.
Try to grind it up the middle and it will be tight.

Goodbye Cleggy

Really like that team, could well be better then last week's. Its great that we now have so many options across the full 23 and we still have Chisholm to come back in.

Agree with prop that we need to get back flour direct gameplsn of lots of short passes and offloads to moving players and aim to get in behind the oppo defence then get the ball to the backs and use the pace and space out wide. Got to show that we can mix the forwards and backs is properly.

My other point would be no more trying to force things in our own 22!

Henson not playing again, it seems. I assume he hasn't recovered from his calf injury, having only just previously recovered from his back injury.

Almost time now!

Quins really need to leave with four points today, five would be amazing though.

Oddly so far it's been a weekend for the away teams with Tigers, Saints and Irish all winning away. Let's hope that rubs off on Quins.

COYQ's!!

The 5 point looks on ATM. 6-21 Quins, 2 pens to 3 converted tries

6-21 to Quins at half time. Three tries to Quins so far from Care, Lowe and Robshaw. Fingers crossed for a fourth in the second half.

Thankfully add to that the fact that Saracens couldn't score four tries if they were playing their 15 against a 7's team and fingers crossed we'll finish the weekend back on the top of the league.

Beat me to it CJ!

Very happy with this season so far, better than I expected but we do need to make sure we don't slip up against Connacht next week, even at home it could be a tough game

Welsh coming back, kudos to them

19-31

Mainly penalties.

There's the BP

ChequeredJersey wrote:There's the BP

Can Quins prevent London Welsh from acheiving a losing bonus point? You would think so but this team are great at getting small results at the end of games.

I don't think we'll worry either way. O'Shea will annoyed if we do something silly (stupid pens or poor defence) to give Welsh the losing BP but we'll be focusing on our points not trying to stop other teams from playing

See that's annoying but as long as we get the 5 it's fine

Got it 26-31.

That's not a bad result for London Welsh against a far more capable team. Harlequins are touted as possible HEC champions, many Premiership fans still think London Welsh will get relegated.

I think they can be happy with the LBP, without sounding too cocky we aren't the easiest side to take points off anymore

ChequeredJersey wrote:I think they can be happy with the LBP, without sounding too cocky we aren't the easiest side to take points off anymore

No Quins are the best team in England. One of the best in Europe.

How did rob lewis play at SH for Welsh?

London Welsh v Harlequins: Exiles defy the odds to find a new home in the Premiership

By Paul Ackford at The Telegraph

London Welsh against Harlequins on Sunday afternoon. It should be top against bottom, but only one side have kept to script. London Welsh, everyone’s patsy at the start of the season, have confounded predictions by winning four of their opening 12 fixtures.

With more than half the campaign over, they lie nine points ahead of Sale who face Saracens on Sunday.
“Over the next five months the focus is on survival,” said Tony Copsey, who took over as the club’s chief executive last week. “Two wins should ensure that, and, to be fair, the threat of relegation will be around for another two years simply because we have the lowest wage bill in the league, at least £1.5 million below any other club’s. But the plan and the vision is to push the business forward so that in five years we will be a top-four side appearing in Heineken Cups.”
Delusions of grandeur from a man who has been in post a few days? Possibly, but Copsey has been in a similar spot with Harlequins where he was commercial director under Mark Evans. People thought then that their talk of redeveloping the Stoop, increasing the fan base and filling Twickenham for league and Heineken Cup games was barmy. But together, even weathering relegation, they began the club’s impressive transformation to their current position.
Copsey insists that Welsh, who play their home matches at Oxford’s Kassam Stadium and hope to move there on a permanent basis, could be even better placed than Quins. “At the first game against Leicester, 75% of the 6,850 crowd were locally based. That shows there is definitely a marketplace. It’s the model of club rugby which works in England. You have a club with a very big catchment area in a vibrant city with no real competition from football with all due respect to Oxford United. It is not like London where Premiership football dictates the whole marketplace. It’s a similar situation to that at Leicester, Gloucester, Northampton, Exeter and Bath.”
Ever pragmatic, Copsey is acutely aware of the tenuous nature of Welsh’s connection with the rest of the Premiership. “There is a degree of hand-to-mouth survival going on at the moment,” he acknowledged. “But if we can get the right investment and produce the right results from a business point of view, that vision is plausible.”

Improving the squad is an immediate target. “It’s the calibre of player rather than the size of the squad which matters. If you look at other clubs, you can see the options they have available across all positions. It’s not as simple as signing a good quality Samoan or whatever. There are the EQP rules [where clubs are rewarded financially for fielding and producing England qualified players] and the heritage of the club to consider.”
So far so good. In attempting to secure their future in the Premiership, Welsh, like Exeter, have kept faith with the bulk of the side which worked so hard to get promoted. “Everyone expected us to be the whipping boys and to lose games by a considerable margin,” Copsey said. “I think the players fancied having a go at that. They were written off and, as a consequence, they have tried to prove a point.”

It's possible that London Welsh could over haul Worcester and Bath. They are only six points short.

Harlequins director of rugby Conor O’Shea launched a furious attack on the referee after his side returned to the top of the Aviva Premiership with this bonus-point win.
O’Shea accused official Llyr ApGeraint Roberts of a catalogue of errors, saying: ‘I’m unbelievably frustrated. You’d have to go a long way to see worse.
‘Everything was wrong - it was incredible. The offside line was irrelevant, trailing runners coming back was irrelevant, backing into the maul, not releasing in the tackle - all irrelevant.'

In-form Danny Care scored Quins' first try
He added: ‘We were 21-6 up at half-time but bafflingly, the penalty count was against us. How can that be? We have a feedback process for the referees but it’s not actioned upon and it’s very difficult at times.’
It is the second time in a week, following equally frustrated comments by Leicester’s Richard Cockerill when giving his verdict on Andrew Small’s decisions in the Tigers’ 17-12 win over Gloucester, that a major club figure has questioned officialdom.
O’Shea added: ‘This is just a bit of moral support as well for Cockers last week. I am just mightily frustrated. I have vented in the dressing room to the players.'

Nick Evans' consistency with the boot wasReliable: Nick Evans' consistency with the boot was again vital to Quins.
He continued: ‘Something has to be done. Not all of these guys (refs) are full time. Let’s be fair - our jobs are on the line every week and it is a strange position to say, “Well, they are not full time but that’s fine”.’
Quins were great in the first half as London Welsh seemed on course for a crushing defeat, and O’Shea was happy with his players’ performance.
‘We played some magnificent running in the first 45 minutes and that’s what we should be talking about - our full back, Ollie Lindsay-Hague, dazzled people with his footwork,’ O’Shea said.


Sounds that COS must have a point as he is pretty cool most of the time. It does seem ridiculous that part - timers are in charge of these games?
Does anybody that went have a view on the officiating?

BigTrevsbigmac wrote:Sounds that COS must have a point as he is pretty cool most of the time.

He's always come across as very level headed and realises that decisions go both for and against. Very unlike him to vent about the reffing, so he must have been pretty unhappy.

I didn't realise ref's were part-time. That does seem a little strange in the professional era.

COS took issue with a lot of the ref decisions -
http://www1.skysports.com/rugby-union/news/12546/8383783/Conor-O-Shea-slams-referee-after-Harlequins-hold-off-London-Welsh

Ooops, sorry bigTrev, hadnt seen your post.
I was there, had a good seat near the half way line.
The referee was pretty poor, missing a lot of infringements. Back foot of the ruck wasnt policed at all, numerous lazy runners etc.

COS makes no mention of the punch to Sam Smiths face though - that was particularly nasty one for the refs and linos to miss. I wonder if its being left for the citing officer.

A note on Kassam Stadium - nice, easy to get to and free parking. Atmosphere is dead there though! Exiles really need to work on that.
There were more Quins supporters there than home support and they appeared to be the only ones making any noise.
Just my feeling, but unless they do something to make the experience more interesting/entertaining then the Exiles are going to struggle to gain local support from the Oxford area.