Rugby column by ex-Gloucester captain and coach Keith Richardson (From Gazette Series)

Rugby column by ex-Gloucester captain and coach Keith Richardson

11:03am Thursday 4th February 2010 in

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GLOUCESTER needed no more than a canter to swat a poor Worcester Warriors team away 17-5. The game was riddled with errors and, sad to say, the major ones came from the home side, who could so easily have won this by at least four tries more.

There were two tries from Burns and Qera, and Robinson kicked both conversions and a penalty. Worcester’s consolation try from Pennell probably flattered them on the day as they had, for vast chunks of the game, looked devoid of scoring anything.

The whole event was odd. Hardly anybody knew what LV meant, so the sponsors of this Anglo-Welsh tournament need to educate spectators and get the message across that they do not supply luncheon vouchers.

Then the very structure of the matches is strange. There are 12 English and 4 Welsh teams in groups of 4. But you don’t actually play anybody in your group! There had to be many committee meetings to come up with that one and we can all rest easily at night in the knowledge that the game is in good hands.

Gloucester will no doubt have had a video session on Monday and Mr Redpath, I hope, was fuming. Gloucester were hopeless at the scrum and could hardly win a lineout, yet there were many more tries on offer that were available for anybody who could catch a ball when running.

Worcester, in contrast, will have held a wake instead of a video session. They rested most of their team last week against Montpellier so that they could target Gloucester. Well, they were well wide of the target and had very little to offer.

The Warriors are a feisty bunch who have always seemed to me to epitomise the best characteristics in making life difficult for opponents - especially Gloucester. On Saturday, though, they simply seemed to get bogged down. Had it not been for a couple of outstanding performances from Latham and Tuitopou, they would have had 80 minutes of anonymity.

Poor handling skills lost Gloucester a potential cricket score, but the lineout was no better. Azam seemed to be walking on eggshells and was fairly anonymous throughout. Perhaps the riot act has been read too many times on the riots that he has personally instigated, but this game needed him to do a bit of swashbuckling. It was all too nice. If you are going to destroy your own possession at the lineout, at least make sure that there is a bit of mayhem to compensate.

Even when the general area of the lineout was threatened with the ball, Bortolami seemed determined to hit an area of grass that was as far away from the scrum half as possible. Lewis at nine really should have threatened his Italian team-mate with a bit of violence, but at about a third of his height and weight this could have been a problem.

The scrum was marginally better than the lineout, but only just. Worcester did huff and puff here, but it was too little in a lost cause. Their only try came from (another) Gloucester mess-up at a lineout and they could take very little out of the encounter.

Gloucester can at least look to an exciting performance from Burns, who could be an Olly Morgan clone at full back. He has an eye for space and has some pace to get into it. The other big plus for the Cherry and Whites is that they were a vastly changed team from their first choice one and they came out with an easy win against Worcester.

The visitors, in contrast, had all their big guns and they failed to fire. This may give their coaching staff some real headaches when the Premiership league matches resume and Gloucester know that they will have a far stronger set of selections available when they need them.

Do you agree with Keith? Have your say below.