Left Lineout: April

Nottingham celebrate a rare March success
 

After the honeymoon, the comedown.

I admit the previous Left Lineout was too optimistic an affair. Between bleary-eyed recollections of a string of games that had carried the Green and Whites into a playoff place and teary-eyed celebrations of the long-awaited move to Lady Bay, things got a bit out of hand. I’m all for a healthy dose of reckless abandon, but Butch Cassidy or the Sundance Kid we ain’t. Therefore this month’s edition has been suitably adjusted to reflect the grizzly day-to-day reality of a team down on its luck and often stretched beyond its means. Normal service, then, has been resumed.

Don’t get me wrong, the Lady Bay move has been fantastic. Just four games in and already the place feels like home, having witnessed the full gamut of emotion, the tantalising range of desperation and elation lurking between the peaks of triumph and despair that come with being a Nottingham Rugby fan (or a fan of any sports team, anywhere, for that matter).

But that’s no substitute for cold, hard wins. How the team responded to the shellacking at the hands of the Worcester Warriors at the back end of last month’s update was always likely to be important in defining how this season pans out. The follow-up just had the feeling of one of those must-win games. In that sense Yorkshire Carnegie were far from the ideal opponents: a plucky side capable of some fantastic rugby on their day, particularly from the forwards. And in their own backyard, too.

As it transpired it was something of a horror show. Naturally we made it far too easy for them. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve lamented how disciplinary problems have cost us much-needed points, and I’m not alone. Ok, so the sin-binning of Campese Ma’afu and Shaun Malton wasn’t why we lost, even the most short-sighted of observers would struggle to draw that conclusion given the 43-14 scoreline, but it certainly didn’t help.

Brent Wilson
 

As for the Cornish Pirates, I could spend the rest of this year trying to figure how we lost that game and still fail to come with any answers. It was the most ludicrous of defeats, and one that left us clinging on desperately and unconvincingly to a Championship playoff place, like Jeremy Clarkson issuing yet another apology as his seven-figure BBC contract turns to dust in his white knuckle grip.

It was a damaging defeat, and one that extended our losing run to four games. I suppose such a run of results was always likely to come at some point, but it was an unfortunate time for it to appear. I guess a stadium move had the potential to upset the team’s momentum. As discussed in a previous Left Lineout, a mid-season move is far from ideal, but the atmosphere around Lady Bay had been so positive that there was a feeling in the air that we could keep on winning and consolidate that playoff spot.

Stepping away for a minute, it’s worth remembering that finishing anywhere near the top four this season would have to be regarded as overachievement. Either way, it gave the Bristol game that familiar ‘must-win’ feeling all over again.

It’s a curiosity of the Championship – and a damning indication of its vacuous structure – that what should be a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat clash between two of the division’s top four sides actually bares a closer resemblance to the sort of David and Goliath encounter that, despite the odd romantic upset, tends to leave David needing major hospital treatment.

And this wasn’t Worcester Warriors we’re talking about, but Bristol: a team in many ways cut from a similar cloth to our own. They may have climbed a few rungs above us on the ladder with Gavin Henson et al, and they have far more Premiership experience, but both clubs have long and rich histories and are from cities with plenty in common. And in recent seasons we’ve each found ourselves firmly placed in the ‘almost too big for the Championship, definitely too poor for the Premiership’ category.

Paul Grant
 

So, how is it that the Bristol clash took place in front of a crowd of 8,000 and against an opponent with nine internationals in their starting fifteen? The obvious answer is that while Nottingham Rugby has recently moved away from an association with a football team, Bristol Rugby are embracing their own. Ashton Gate is a great place to watch rugby, and the relationship with Bristol City FC seems, from the outside at least, overwhelmingly positive. Mark my words, this could well be the season they finally go back up.

I know, I know. We’re straying dangerously close to a rant about Championship finances here, but I’ll save that for another day. Let’s just say that Bristol won, the run of games without a win ticked over to five, and we dropped out of the top four.

But you should never give up on this side because one of the most endearing things about the Green and Whites is their ability to surprise. It’s not always a good thing, but it certainly keeps the long, hard campaign interesting. Just when the season looked set to implode, what happens? A bloody big 49-32 win against Moseley at the Bay, that’s what. It was an odd one, alright. The team were hardly at their best, in fact we were borderline shambolic in the first half, but after the disappointment of the last few weeks it was a sweet afternoon nevertheless.

And then it was two. Tiff Eden won the battle of the boot with Dougie Flockhart in an edgy and thrilling showdown with the Doncaster Knights at Castle Park, and just like that five straight defeats became back-to-back wins. Typical.

So a lot of losing, a bit of winning, some dodgy performances and the odd good one, too. The playoffs are still very much within reach, but we’re on such a rollercoaster ride that it’s impossible to say with any certainty where we’ll end up.

Still, the Six Nations was bloody brilliant, wasn’t it?