World in Union

The Rugby Guinness Premiership season started again this weekend and to celebrate, part of the opening weekend, was the "London double-header" at Twickenham. This involves the four "London" clubs playing two local derbies against each other, one at 2.30pm and then one at 5.15 pm. The first game was Saracens vs. London Irish and the second London Wasps VS Harlequins.

My friend John and his family are massive Harlequins fans and he suggested that a crowd of us go along and he arranged the tickets. Now I agreed not really thinking about the cost, but when he asked for £35 for me and both boys (£15 for me, a tenner each for Matt & Will), I was, frankly, amazed!

We got to the stadium at about 12.30pm and parked in a local college for a further £10. As the college had a large playing field we'd agreed to meet up there and have a picnic, before moving on to the stadium, where a small village of food and drink was set up. The major part of this was the Guinness village with food and drink stands, big screens and live music. Inside the stadium were even more bars! We had a perfect view although we were in the middle tier and behind one end

As John is a Quins fan we naturally supported their main rivals, namely London Irish in the first game. Now I've not seen much live rugby, but I know enough to say that "the Irish" started slowly and were 18-3 down by half time. Saracens who were the home team played good attacking rugby and scored two quick tries. The second half though was a different affair, with Irish far more focused and they slowly cut the deficit, by scoring two tries, but importantly missing one of the conversions and two penalties, all of which were fairly kickable. 18-14 down with four minutes to go, we were treated to a grandstand finish, but sadly no more points were scored. Kicking practice required this week as the missed points (8) cost them the game.

As our hosts' team were playing in the second game we, of course, all supported London Wasps (who used to be just Wasps, but as they play their home games in High Wycombe, needed to add London to their name!!!)

Quins have had a fair amount of publicity recently over the "blood gate" scandal, whereby their director of rugby, Dean Richards, initiated a scam where the Quins full back took a fake blood capsule from his sock, bit the end off and squeezed the blood into his mouth so that he had to be substituted and the replacement, a kicker, could take a vital kick. This would have worked perfectly had 1)Sky cameras not filmed the capsule being taking from the sock, 2) the full back hadn't winked at his mates as he came off and 3) the blood coming from his mouth was enough to have killed him if real! All has now been revealed and suspensions and sackings followed. Dean Richards's rugby career is effectively over.

This was Quins first game since the scandal broke and within 45 seconds of the start they were involved in more blood injury headlines! Clearly their Prop forward Robson decided that everyone should know what a real blood injury should look like and therefore proceeded to head butt one of the Wasps players in the first minute. Blood did flow, so we're now clear what the real stuff looks like and this was quickly followed by a red card!! 45 seconds into the season and Quins are down to 14 men! And now the bit you couldn't make up...the referee's name that sent Robson of was Dean Richards! I kid you not.

Somewhat surprisingly the 14 men played some great rugby and took a 12-5 lead. Not good for us Wasps fans, but slowly but surely the extra man started to have an impact and the lead was firstly reduced and then eradicated as Wasps took a game winning 26-15 lead.

As a football fan I was amazed that:-

• Four sets of local rival fans could all sit together in a stadium, drink copious amounts of beer and all get on well! (Imagine Arsenal, Spurs, Wet Ham Chelsea fans in a similar position, the end result would send the Newspaper editors into a tail spin)
  
• Drinking was actively encouraged with a bar no more than 20 yards from you at any time!!
  
• Returning to you seats with a drink was a good thing, not a criminal offence which would get you ejected from the ground.
  
• Two games of rugby only cost £15.