I use the term "greeted us" loosely as we had been sitting around THEIR club for 15 minutes before anyone actually acknowledged we were there. This was continued when we arrived on the pitch as they had a 20 minute warm up with no explanation so we stood around like spare pricks at a wedding, after our 2 compulsory line outs - it turned out we were waiting for them to convince someone knocking around the club to ref our match.

We decided to opt for a mauling game plan and try and keep it up our jumpers to slow the game down and play at our pace - the problem was without contested scrums the pack took a while to warm up to the match and the young quick backs of Scrummage Cowards soon put us 2 tries down, even though we had some possession. A 16 man restart (sorry refuse to call it a scrum) centre field gave us our first real chance, the ball made its way out to Big Aussie to chipped over the top and chased down his own kick to score in the right corner but Scrummage Cowards scored 2 more tries in the first half so we turned round 28 - 5 down but the pack was starting to warm up - the backs were already warm chasing the Scrummage Cowards three-quarter and putting in some great hits and first time tackles and keeping the score down to just the 4 tries.

Half time talk from Big Skip called for a change of tactics - we were having more success rucking than mauling as they were not interested in the contact at the breakdown, and they didn't seem to like the old fashioned way of moving someone lying on the wrong side!

I have left three messages with Stuart Barnes for the match stats but he has not returned my calls - so I will take a punt and say we had 75% of the possession in the second half. Big Skip summarised the second half as the best 8 man performance from a pack he has seen for a good while, and he was a Moseley last week!! On one occasion we rattled through the phases, pick and go, pass to a pod, pick and go and played our way from our 22 to their 22 before they gave away a blatant penalty for finally killing the ball. On another we went from inside our own half to the 5 metre before the same player (who the ref threatened to bin in the first 10 mins but then seemed to forget) gave a penalty again. This time from the 16 man restart Big Skip ran in yet another try to continue a rich run of scoring form

Another spell of double figures phases was finished with Uncle A, Bilbo and Oz all three going from the base of a ruck to score on the line - Uncle A getting the credit unless Barnsey gets back to me with the TMO

A few breakaway tries meant we lost the second half 15 - 10 but the pride in the jersey was immense from all 16 who never stopped fighting

After the match we passed a 3rd team game and notice Scrummage Cowards were living up to their name in this fixture too - both 3rd team and 4th team fixtures had uncontested scrums!! The great hospitality was continued after the game as we sat and ate in a room on our own as our hosts were nowhere to be seen, except one guy from the second row who was moaning about stud marks all down his back :-)

The Awards

Donkey - D of R for calling a long restart that only went 2 yards forward

Deputy MOTM - The pack


Roving