May and Baker 2nd XV 45 Harlow 3rd XV 20

Merit Table

Saturday 28th November 2009

With the 4th team without a fixture and the 3s short of numbers we agreed to get a team out to fulfil the away game to May and Baker 2s. Man flu, Xmas shopping and people who just couldn’t be bothered to come left the team with 13 players.

Harlow were waiting for Rob Kelly who was running late, the opposition lent us a player and we start with 13 against 15.  May and Baker were quick to exploit their 2 man overlap from the start, spinning it out to their quick winger who scored under the posts.  Harlow dominated the scrum pretty much the whole game, we lost our first scrum and from then on won all our own ball and lots of the opposition put in.  Unfortunately the lack of players meant that it took a while to convert the possession into points.

The first try came when the ball was quickly spun out to Monkey who crashed through the defence who had been sucked into a series of rucks by the forwards.  For some strange reason we decided not to use the kicking tee and as a result got no conversions.  With the ball spilling out of the back of the scrum on a regular basis we gifted May and Baker 3 soft tries which did not reflect the run of play. 

Eventually Rob Kelly arrived, which reduced the team deficit to just one.  We were losing badly at half time but with the wind behind us the second half got off to a much better start.  We scored 3 tries this half, all of them, Swampy, Nick Moore and Mark(guest from May and Baker) all of them came from quick ball to the backs and Mumbles delivering a well timed pass to allow each person to score.  He was unlucky not to score himself, when he was held up over the line by 2 of the opposition.  Freddy Lloyd and Rob Spinks defended well with Freddy delivering one of his trademark tackles leaving the guy on the floor gasping for air.  Barney cutting someone in half with a huge tackle, near the end, which I heard, 30 metres away.

The scrum was awesome Chris, Neal, James, Barney, eventually Rob, with James and Swampy filling the back row.  Swampy was a needle in the oppositions side all day, he received some special care and attention leaving his leg looking like it had been bitten by a dog, and a minor scratch to his eyelid.  This omits the punches he received.

Two of the Baker boys received yellow cards, one for swearing( after Chris and I encouraged him to release the ball) the other for persistently coming in from the side, unfortunately for us all this did was equalise the numbers.  It was quite unlucky that when we matched the numbers, the guy we had borrowed had to come off with a hamstring injury.

Funny moments-May and Baker taking a quick tap penalty and then stopping when they realised the ref had not made a mark, then playing on and scoring much to our surprise.

Taking a quick tap penalty ourselves and being called back as it was not from the mark and the opposition had not retreated.

The first yellow card was great, from the elbow down, both arms got the full treatment on the opposition 5, he got up called me a very rude name and the ref went” I’m not having that” off he went.

Rob Spinks explaining to his opposite number, that if he tried to pick him up and spear tackle him again, he would “die”.

MOTM-Everyone who played

COTM- the guys who let us down without a good reason, especially the one who was working close to where the game was going to be played but didn’t have his kit.  General consensus is that you might be what the number 5, called me.

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