Harlow 4th XV 7 Chingford 8

Friendly 

It’s a normal start to the day to be receiving calls from the 3^rd team, need players, and then the director of rugby(told him I am not playing up again) make sure the 3s have some players as the 1s have taken from the 2s, the 2s from the 3s, luckily one of the 4^th team was able to step in.  On arrival at the club I met with a bloke who had been told to turn up and who had been promised a game, chatted to him and decided that he would watch as we had enough players, how we laughed when we discovered that he was actually a Chingford ringer.  Quite amusing to watch the Chingford manager make substitutions when he has no idea of the players names.  Chingford were a bit worried to find out that we had a full team and subs(our last away game was a rout in their favour)

The game got started after a vigorous warm up(vigorous for the 4s anyway), no sign of the sun, just a howling gale.  It was an evenly matched affair with both sides putting in some big tackles, the Chingford number 8 getting dumped on several occasions. Harlow put the Chingford scrum under pressure, and Chingford started taking some of the Harlow lineout ball, this was the pattern for the whole game.  Harlow spent quite a long time penned in their 22 after some good touch kicks assisted by the wind.  We knew there were ringers involved when Chingford opted to kick a penalty, 3 points to Chingford, it took another 10 minutes for Chingford to sneak in for a try with the winger outnumbered down the blind side.  If anything this fired Harlow up, we started to put pressure on Chingford in their 22, a quick tap penalty saw Gaggy in under the posts, this was duly converted by Justin.  The second half was more of the same, Harlow now had the scrums and Chingford most of the lineouts, neither side could dent the oppositions defence.  Harlow could have scored but lacked the clinical finish, most of the second half was played in the Chingford end.  We lost 8-7 to a team who fully expected to come here and thrash us, their team a mixture (like ours) of old and young, big and small.

MOTM- The Hammer got the port for his performance which included a probable try saving charge down of a kick through, and his commitment in the tackle.  Swampy was all over the place as usual frothing at the mouth and laying people out with his rock hard head(accidentally I hasten to add), Big Andy snapped his back(although rumour has it that Swampy did it).  Barney put in a great performance again, Karl and Paul continue to use their devastating pace and great tackling skills.  This gets harder to pick every week, everyone has raised their game.

COTM  There is no award this week no one deserves it

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