Exiles overwhelmed by strong Ruislip club side.
Stef McCabe reports.
Going back to Friday and looking at the 9 positive responses of those that wanted to play on Saturday, I wondered if the usual dozen or so others had become a little apathetic following the conclusion of our league campaign. Thankfully Mitch signed up at the last minute and was able to bring along a few mates to confirm our fixture.
It was a beautiful warm spring afternoon when I walked into the Ruislip club house to the inviting sight of Barry handing out the pre-match Guinness. Everything seemed to be in order for a great day, unfortunately soon after the Guinness is when the good ended.
We had to shuffle our forward pack around as we had only two regular front rowers, three second rowers and, unprecedentedly after weeks of several back rowers, only one turned up for this match! Well done to Tom for stepping up and moving from the second row into the front row – you had an absolute cracker of a game! We also recruited Neal from the backs to play on one flank whilst an opposition player was supplied for use on the other.
We won the toss and received the ball, we had a very good start, claiming it well and slowly making our way up into the opposition’s 22. We kept the pressure on but unfortunately after several minutes we could not capitalise. We ended up losing the ball which Ruislip punted down into our half and shortly afterwards claimed the first try of the match. Followed by a bunch more.
Quite a few stern words were given each time we were behind the posts, unfortunately it took another few more Ruislip tries before the words kicked in and we started to get our act together. We had some good runs to get us into the Ruislip end of the field, this was followed up by the forwards finally securing the ball at the rucks enabling the ball to be shipped to the backs who took us into opposition 22. From a well recycled ball I picked it up and seen McSweeny on my shoulder, I looked to ship it but with the opposition in his face I kept the ball in hand and managed to beat a couple of defenders and cross over to claim a try.
Ruislip quickly responded with more tries and unfortunately this continued throughout the second half. However we did catch a break when the opposition fumbled a backline move and one of Mitch’s mates swooped on it and darted 50 yards up the field for our second and final try.
Ruislip were a very good outfit with winning their league and gaining promotion. To add insult to our misery they loaded this team with players from higher parts of the club, it was quite an inhospitable affair which ended up being an extremely bad day out for the Exiles.
On another note it was Dave McSweeny’s birthday on Saturday. Alex organised a rather interesting looking curdled Guinness drink but luckily for Dave he took off without catching sight of it. Not so lucky for Mitch though who gallantly downed it after being nominated by his old man. Good effort Mitch!
Tries
- Stef McCabe
- One of the Joes
Cons:
- Alex A
Players:
1 – Tom Tom
2 – Fabio
3 – Dave McSweeny
4 – Eff Lynch
5 – Anthony
6 – Ruislip Player – Connor
7 – Neal Craig
8 – Julian
9 – Stef McCabe
10 – Mitch
11 – Alex Adide
12 – Scott
13 – Mitch’s mate Joe
14 – Mike Salmon
15 – Mitch’s mate Joe too
