News

Hewat lifts recent kicking gloom

September 29 2008

London Irish goal-kicker Peter Hewat has admitted his performance against Harlequins on Saturday has gone some way in making up for earlier blunders.

Australian Hewat crossed for a late try in an eighteen-point haul as the victorious Exiles ran in 25 unanswered points at the Stoop.

And the full-back believes his showing has now repaired the damage done during recent games against Bath and Leicester - when he was off-target from the tee.

"I felt like I owed the boys one and was lucky enough to come through with it. We felt that we had to get our season back on track," he said, speaking to BBC Radio Berkshire.

"I decided I'd knock it over off the post. I like to keep it interesting for the fans," he joked.

Toby Booth's side were down 20-3 after just half-an-hour in Twickenham and seemed to be heading for a third straight loss.

However, the dressing room talk seemed to spur the Exiles into life as they set about their impressive comeback.

"We were pretty poor in the first half. We spoke about it at half time and we said we needed to stick to the basics [but] we threw a lot of ball away," Hewat added.

"The penalty count was something like 7-2 to them in the first half, [but] you can't give Harlequins that much ball because they had the young players to hurt us."

Next up for Irish are top-of-the-table side Sale at the Madejski Stadium on Wednesday as the Guinness Premiership is pushed forward to midweek due to Anglo-Welsh weekend action.

And Hewat believes that the result against Harlequins is a massive boost to their build-up at home to the Sharks.

"If we went into that Sale game on Wednesday with a loss, it really would have put the heat on us," he said.

"There's a few boys carrying a few niggles, but we want another win against Sale. We need to keep getting some momentum.

"Last year we started slowly. If we can build some momentum into Christmas, we know what we're like when the weather fines up."