Woodford  4th XV 29 Harlow 4th XV 14

Friendly 

Pitch report-Chris assures me that with the sunshine streaming across the pitch, the natural drainage of the bottom field will ensure a nice soft ground underfoot.  The grass had been cut nice and short and overall the pitch looked lovely.  In future Chris will be providing an overall summary of the pitch conditions, and advice on how they could be improved.

Last weeks match report was littered with errors, the score omitted to recognise the ginger ninjas first try this season.  Mex and Justin were not credited with their assists and apparently again I was COTM.

This weeks game saw us play Woodford, we have played them before and heard the immortal line, "we have loads of players our second team have cancelled", those of us that played that game remember their entire back line changing at half time oh joy!

The game got off to an interesting start, one of the Woodford players was "actively rucking" a new tactic that the 4th team would happily embrace, it involves standing on the player and repeatedly stamping up and down.  The captain lead by example, removed the offending player and remonstrated with him politely.  Enough about that, we scored, a great pass from Barney saw Mark pass to Sunbed who crashed over the line ,7-0, kicking practice paid off for Justin who slotted both of the available conversions.  Paul our new recruit full back used all of his pace to scorch down the wing for our second try.  It was about this time that all 6 of the Woodford colts in the backs realised that with the sun beating down they might just be a bit quicker and fitter than we were.  They replied to our tries with one on each wing having stretched play all over the place, we were still in the lead.  Their forwards were not having a good day and our backs were being  run ragged, they scored again.  We were down at half time but used our subs judiciously, Woodford only had 10 subs and the one that snuck down at half time from the vicinity of the 1st team pitch.  Woodford were restricted to only 2 tries in the second half, this was due to a comprehensive display of tackling and defence, this involved everyone including "The Hammer" and Mark(new man), not to forget Steff who unfortunately for us is off to Uni. Danny took all 8 of the scrum to stop him reaching the line but was unable to offload.  The ref took pity on Paul who is so unfit that he needed a rest for 10 minutes, after a rash tackle,(good refereeing I thought,), although I also considered it to be "actively rucking". We have played Woodford a few times so afterwards in the bar it was in fact no surprise to learn that their 3rd team had not had a game which gave them a few subs.

As it was Barneys birthday and he supplied a superb pass to set up a try and worked non-stop in the line out and scrum he is MOTM.  Pretty much the whole pack and all involved subs played a huge game, this gave the backs ball to work with, although I for one will welcome a cold damp day instead of lovely summer sunshine.

Ben made his debut for the team, the first of many games I reckon.  Mex is making the blind side flanker position his own.

I apologise for this nomination for COTM but I can't think of anyone else- Aunty cleaned me out with a massive clash of heads which left us both a bit dazed(I have the hardest head so it hurt me less!!!!!!!) All I can really say is that in order to beat us Woodford needed to field a set of backs who were mostly colts, up front they were not happy, when we play a side that is not fielding a similar back line,we are going to surprise alot of teams.

Roll on next week and lets try and do some training Thursday.

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