Read Stef’s report. Yes details of Chandra playing at fly half, finally after a life long ambition his dreams are realised.
With only 13 players and no bar open for pre-match Guinness it was always going to be a struggle against an eager home team with several subs.
The match began as a fairly well contested affair but sure enough after a while the opposition found the missing players in our back line and exploited that with some swift movements and got a bunch of tries.
Their forward pack even wanted to play some back line rugby as they did not commit much to the rucks and mauls and spread themselves down the line. Their ploy worked as nine against four is always hard to defend and they ran in a few more good tries. However their tactic also allowed our forwards to punch up the field when we were on the ball. Jareth in particular found some good gaps on the fringe and ran magnificently.
Barry won quite a few scrums against the feed and the rest of the pack did a magnificent job to secure a clean ball for the backs. Chandra (first time flyhalf) spotted gaps on the blindside and worked those lines like Pete Doherty in a nightclub. It was unfortunate that we did not have the numbers to be able to support Chandra as he ran out of steam.
We went into the break with two good tries and many other opportunities just missed. Put that together with some fine words from Barry at half time, we had all the encouragement we needed to reduce the large deficit. The type of thing David Cameron should take notes from.
The second half started well, we took the ball and bashed it up the field. We made good ground and were rewarded with points fairly quickly. We played some magnificent rugby in the second half, the forwards shuffled out to help the backs which showed in our defence. It and also freed up players for support when we broke their defensive line. We managed to get the ball off loaded during the tackle and when we took the ball to ground we recycled it well.
With about 15 minutes remaining their captain graciously lent us a few players. The benefits of having 15 men were instant and we ran in a few tries in succession. With not long to play and a miscalculation by the ref we were led to believe we were only trailing by 3 points, this fired us up and we managed to get that extra try! Then the opposition got one but that’s not important, it’s a moral victory to the exiles for probably winning the second half and playing some damn good rugby as a team!
Tries / Cons – no idea yet!
1) Ghassan Mattras – ½ match
2) Barry Cousins
3) Gautier Henry
4) Anthony Lynch
5) John Moore
6) Tom Laishley
7) Gautam Teague
8) Jareth Keenan
9) Stef McGabe
10) Chandra Sekar
11) –
12) Neal Craig
13) –
14) Afe Ogun
15) Allun Simpson
