Glos v Viadana

HC January 11th 2003

Bright sunshine greeted us for this game but it was still a very cold January day. Triple socks kept my feet from falling off this time, but they were still bordering on being ice blocks.
Much as it's great to see Kingsholm sold out, from a fan's point of view it's much more comfortable to be there in a lesser crowd. More room to move, more chance of a good view etc. This crowd was just over 8,000 (3000 below capacity) - pretty good for the visit of a smaller team, no disrespect to Viadana. This leads me on to all the calls of a cricket score for this one from Glos - why? A good win was all that was needed and Glos came up with the goods outscoring the opposition 10 tries to 1.

Forrester unable to break through this time! Credit to Viadana for their stubborn defence. In the first few minutes of the match they snuffed out a couple of Glos driving mauls in their 22 and it took Glos a further 10 minutes to score. Marcel received the ball in the 22. My cries of "go on Marcel" were more in hope than expectation as he had 2 or 3 defenders to beat but he went on to touch down in the corner.

Further tries from Forrester and Beim took the Half time score to:-
Glos 19 - Viadana 3

Still a pretty close match. Junior scored early in the second half to stretch the lead, then Viadana fought back with penalties and a fine interception try from Steyn who scored all their points. With the score at Glos 26 - Viadana 16 it was time for Glos to wake up. It took them until the final quarter but they did score 6 further tries:- The rumbustious Roncerro!
Junior got a second, Todd scored 2 and JSD and Azam one each. Then the final try of the match came from replacement hooker Chris Collins, nicely set up by Vickster. Vickster played just the second half and he certainly rampaged around in the lose, even kicking for touch at one point. He replaced Roncerro so he had to play loose-head prop as Deacs was playing tight-head.

Gomars was captain for the day as Vickery started on the bench, but Clive Stuart-Smith did play the final 10 minutes of the match at scrum-half.

Final Score : Glos 64 - Viadana 16

So 10 tries from Glos in total with Ludo converting 7.

Steyn breaks away for his try! As my regular readers will know I rarely criticise our lads - I am a fan after all, but our backs as a unit do seem to make hard work of things. Often we watch them pass the ball around a lot without crossing the gain line. This compared to the Sale backs for example looks very laboured; but then they did score 5 tries yesterday so perhaps my criticism is unfair.

There were lots of very good performances. Great to see Andy Hazel play 60 minutes and retire unscathed. JSD was excellent - wonderful to see his sublime passing skills again; but I agree with the HC assessors and man of the match goes to Junior Paramore.

A good win and with Perpignan beating Munster, it's all on the last match next weekend - Matt Phillips runs into Junior Paramore! Munster v Glos.
Our lads are good enough to win out there but the likelihood is that Munster will win. Assuming Perpignan beat Viadana this will leave our group with 3 teams on 8 points (us, Munster and Perpignan). The rules are very complicated as to which team would then top the group. The matches played between the 3 tying teams are taken into consideration. Some say it's tries scored that matter whilst Nick Mullens (the BBC commentator) stated it's aggregate score. I'll go no further except to say that a Glos win or a draw in Munster would see us clearly top of the group, so go for it Glos then we won't need to use our calculators.

Ernie C.