Kings Entertain Woodrush

After three weeks on the road to far afield destinations and some good results, the King's men were pleased to be hosting local rivals Woodrush at Hopwood Park. With the first team game cancelled, Captain Smurph was true to the players who had made the long journeys previously and didn't include any of the frustrated first team players cheering from the side lines. To compound the home teams problems, no referee had been organised which meant that their 10, Shane Rees-Owens was the only qualified person at the club to ensure a game got underway.

After a slightly delayed kick off it was soon apparent that the home team were in for a long afternoon against a young, strong and well drilled Woodrush opposition. With Captain Smurph filling in at fly half, Kings Norton struggled to find any rhythm and also with the high tempo game that Woodrush started with. Despite what Smurph said about recovering from that nasty splinter, one felt that maybe his finger still wasn't back to 100%, as his ball play lacked the expected level of fluency . The visitors were camped in their opponents half and after several phases of play the ball was spread wide and with a four on three overlap Woodrush opened the scoring.

The restart saw another blitz into the Kings half but the home team were refusing to be walked over and with some stout defence from GG and the returning knight Lancellot they weathered the Woodrush onslaught. Some breathless counter attacking running from Ginster and Elsey brought the home team to within a sniff of a try line and with a fine line run by Jake 'SOCKS' Jones even the three tacklers could not bring down the hefty runner.

Norton continued to put pressure on the Woodrush defence, but a wild switch pass was intercepted on the 10 metre line for an easy run in under the posts. With the experienced Jonny Edam coming on at 10 mid way through the first half, KN began to settle and play some good rugby. Just before half time a surge into the Woodrush 22, from Simon Smell and Dan 'Rambo' Thomas, was beautifully finished off by Crompo grounding the ball on the upright engulfed by four defenders but the referee denied the score, penalising the astonished player for a double movement. At 14-5 down at half time Kings Norton were still confident of getting something from the game.

A few enforced changes to the home side brought some disruption to the team and a from a set play on a line out Woodrush were able to use one of their training ground moves to score an excellent try. With some heavy artillery on the bench, the visitors were able to squeeze Kings out of the game and ran in a further three tries in the second half. However, Kings Norton were able to put together some excellent passages of play but the final execution and decision making meant they were unable to add any further scores. Final score 36-5. A mention should go to Alex Guiness, Ben Behan and Craig Hughes for their excellent work in defence and their never say die attitude and also for the crash ball running of Bill Hendon. Despite the heavy loss, bruises and cuts, (especially Jamie 'Roquette' Thomas who looked like he had gone 15 rounds with Apollo Creed) the home team kept their heads held high knowing that they will probably not come up against a stronger team this season.

Next week the Seconds are on the road again at Atherstone where they are hoping to get their season back on track.