Barmy Sunday Afternoon

What a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Beautiful sunshine, 16 degrees, no wind, a part from ‘Trumpet Bum Charlie’ in the changing rooms blaming the previous nights curry …. errr maybe not such a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon after all! But hey the rugby was good and this turned in to a full blooded game with two teams both going for the win and an open, ding dong battle ensued. A fine spectacle, the lead changed hands 3 times and both teams were level pegging for much of it leading to an enjoyable and entertaining watch.

Our usual tacklers were prominent in the early exchanges, Will, Midge, Swiff, Ben and Harry working well in the defensive line, but from an early attack Selby were able to cut us open through the mid backs to score from 25 metres. We came back with some fabulous driving and recycling creating a platform for Swiff to sniff out a pick and go from 5 metres. Selby re-took the lead through some robust forward play, before Tom G made a break, the forwards took it on before the backs broke right finding Tom again in the seam and he finished the move he started. We had a prominent narrow side break with Harry, Max and Ben using soft hands to put Ed away on a purposeful break, but the Selby cover hauled him down. This gave us good field position and the resulting possession found Tom again who sped in. Kick was good, half time 10-17 in our favor.

Second half Selby ran hard at us but we were manful in our tackling, Midge, Charlie, Ben prominent and Max with a cruncher in the Centre. We did concede again from a close series of drives making it a 2 point game. Charlie G, Tom H and Adam all had several runs and made hard yards for us, Charlie almost making the line for the third week running ..... there's got to be a try somewhere in your next game! and Callum always looked a threat with several half breaks from a shimmy and a jink. We soon moved the ball left to Loz on the Wing who didn’t have much space and lots to do, but he cut inside nicely and his momentum took him over the line for his second in the last 2 games. Selby weren’t done though and from a possession they used a nicely weighted cross kick for their speedy Winger to touch down. A pressure kick was struck really well by the Selby kicker to level it and we looked like we’d shot our bolt with less than 10 minutes to go on this hot afternoon.

However I loved the spirit you showed to come back and use your last ounces of energy to throw caution to the wind. There were several positive phases of play, long passes sticking and going to hand, offloads and players rolling the ball back out of tackles when we were isolated to retain the flow and continuity. Really good to watch and see your confidence grow again. This lead to our opponents being stretched and a gap where Max pinned his ears back and backed himself from 20 metres to touch down near the posts to win it.

What a fab game, well done.