Hat-Trick Harry pulls off Gosford’s Great Escape

The iconic scene of the classic film The Great Escape involves Steve McQueen astride a stolen motorcycle, heading towards the Swiss border at high speed, pursued by the enemy. The glorious sunshine beats down, the crisp blue sky framing the alpine vista. Realising there’s no way through the checkpoint he heads along the barbed wire frontier, revs up the bike and attempts to vault the fence…
In the film, of course, McQueen crashes into the wire and is captured by the Germans, fated to spend the rest of the war in the Cooler. On Saturday, the sun beat down, the sky was blue and the role of McQueen was played by the All Black’s enigmatic action hero, Harry Sutton. With three minutes remaining, a point down, Gosford looked to be heading for another agonisingly narrow defeat in their first Southern Counties North Campaign. It was then Sutton revved the engines and strode through the despairing Wycombe defence.
The visitors thought they’d done enough to bookend their season with victories over the All Blacks. Back in September they’d shown the nous to perform at this level and close out a 20-10 win on a drab and drizzly day. Back then, there were flashes of confidence in an All Black side, stirrings that they really did belong in this division. A string of competitive defeats against established clubs, wins over Stow, Bletchley, Beaconsfield and last week against Wallingford proved that to be true.
Wycombe made a solid start, their opening try was the result of well-drilled phase play and using the space well. Two penalties augmented their lead. Gosford were struggling for position, seemed to get a foothold in the set piece against bigger opponents only for pressure to come on again. This didn’t matter as winger Miles Johnson, pounced like a jungle cat on a loose Wycombe pass and raced 80 metres for a try which Chris Bennett converted.
Half Time: GAB 7-13 High Wycombe
As the sides turned round, the pendulum swung, and the talismanic Harry Sutton came to the fore. Within 10 minutes of the break, Gosford were back in the lead after two tries from the fly half. The sight of him striding effortlessly across the trielines of Strafield Brake has been less familiar this season with better organised defences and a pack often living off scraps. However, in the last 3 home matches the Gosford faithful have been treated to dynamic forward performances, swift and efficient lineout ball, a scrum able to compete with all comers, Joe Ballinger delivering crisp ball to the backs. It remained so against Wycombe, and as Sutton scored his second try, few could be criticised for expecting more of the same. The visitors, however, would not allow their season to fizzle away. The green, black and white tide began to surge over the hosts and two more tries followed, capitalising on confusion in the All Black defence and as their opponents had done in the first half, riding their luck a little.
Despite the sun shining, the outlook seemed gloomy for those on the touchline. Flashbacks to close matches against Thatcham, Buckingham, Aylesbury sprang to mind. Not this time, however, as the Gosford defence remained resolute, Jack Briggs and Ben Bodinham made some key tactical kicks to gain field position. The pack won ball in the Wycombe 22 and the Great Escape was on! Repeated attempts to batter through (or tunnel under?) the stoical visitors’ defence were repelled. Then the engine revved, the ball went wide and Harry Sutton soared through a gap to score. With the metronomic Chris Bennett off the field, Ben Bodinham’s attempted conversion went agonisingly wide… Wycombe went in hot pursuit of the Gosford line straight from the kick-off, latching onto loose ball, forcing errors, then spurning a chance to go for goal. The All Blacks, terrier-like in their tenacity, turned the ball over and cleared. Joe Ballinger pounced on the loose Wycombe lineout ball and the call from GAB’s very own ‘Big-X’, the mastermind behind this historic season, Matt Watts, was ‘just kick it out’. It came down to the old warhorse Eugene Griffin to put hoof to ball, which was greeted with the sweet sound of the final whistle.
Gosford All Blacks 24-23 High Wycombe
Thanks to High Wycombe for taking part in a thoroughly entertaining match which was played in the right spirit throughout. Looking forward to seeing you next season.
Man Of The Match – Who else but Harry Sutton
Forward of the Match – Luke Newton a wolf in sheep’s clothing
As you’ll have seen, our resident match reporter, Mike Rhymes is away this week, so apologies from his replacement who forgot his notepad and was also distracted from the action by a screaming baby and an energetic toddler. What is written above may be part fiction, he believes it somehow gets to the ‘truth’ of what occurred…