Mighty 3s too Strong for Young South Leicester

Loughborough 3s: R Kearton, T Watts, J Horrocks, C Phillips, K Ballinger; M Turner, O Moore; D Kendall, T Peaty, M Redpath, S Palit, T Litchfield, M Jennaway, M Burden, J Percival

Replacements: D Talbot, O McMullan, T Guilding, Tom Thornton's Corsa.

The Mighty 3s started their Leicestershire League Division 2 season away at South Leicester. With a fairly young squad of many talents, Boro were confident of victory despite losing three players and a car on the journey down the M1. This meant Captain Dave had to go rescue them and also missed the start of the game, Mike Turner stepped in as skipper.

The 3s however had a strong dressing room including Mark Redpath, who burnt the middle of his long shoelace to make two shoelaces; Mike Turner with his dazzling combination of fluorescent yellow and blue boots accompanied by bright purple socks, and Rhys Kearton who would not stop moaning about his 'Man Flu'.

The South Leicester team contained a lot of young players, including a big Second Row love child belonging to a character out of this is England, and Crabbe from Harry Potter. Loughborough started the game on the front foot and after a good few phases well dictated by young Scrum Half Ollie Moore, Boro got the ball out to the backs where Mike Turner scored, preceded by a break from new-guy centre James Horrocks. Big boy inside-centre Charlie Phillips missed the conversion, 0-5.

Boro managed to continue pressuring South Leicester and after a period camped in their half, the backs got the ball again, this time Horrocks dotted down himself. Mike Turner stepped up and missed the conversion by a country mile, 0-10.

With Boro being 10 points up, South now started to pile the pressure on. With Boro conceding a silly penalty within kicking distance, the South Leicester kicker made no mistake, 3-10. South continued to put pressure on, and Boro kept conceding penalty after penalty. After South put one into the corner, Boro were too soft in the tackle and allowed South to score their first try. Their kicker converted, 10-10.

After dominating early on and now being under pressure, Boro realised they needed to raise their game and did so when persistent moaner Rhys Kearton boshed his way over the line. Mike Turner missed the conversion (again) to make it 10-15 in Boro's favour.

Boro ended the half under massive pressure from South Leicester, who had several scoring opportunities, all of which the Boro players (forwards especially) dealt with exceptionally. Boro kept them out for a good few minutes to keep the score at 10-15 going into the break. Rhys was still moaning about his 'Man Flu'.

The start of the second half was scrappy, but Boro had the better start of the two sides and despite not scoring, the engine room of Tom Litchfield and Shaq Palit were both performing well at the breakdown as well as some strong runs (and SBW offloading) from behemoth centre Charlie Phillips.

Despite South having some time in Boro's half the game was largely even at this point until a couple of good breaks in the centres ended with Horrocks running over for his second try in the corner. Conversion again missed by Turner, 10-20.

Boro were then fairly quick to give South another opportunity to stay in the game when, despite many warnings from the referee, Boro conceded another silly penalty. The South kicker again made no mistake of dinking it over, 13-20.

With Captain Dave finally arriving after 60 minutes with rescued pair Ollie McMullan and Tom Guilding, Boro had some new found life. With Boro just inside South's half, centre Phillips managed to make his way through the opposition defence. Like a bull in a china shop, Phillips crashed over the line, losing both boots in the process to score Boro's fifth try of the day. Mike Turner finally broke his kicking duck when he converted, 13-27.

With some sustained pressure being piled on by Boro, Fly Half Mike Turner did an extravagant cross-field kick. As the ball was being dotted down I looked away and didn't see it, so I'm afraid I can't say who scored it.

I did however, see the conversion attempt by Dave Talbot. Dave was already making his excuses to the referee before he'd even placed the ball. He said that the fact he hadn't kicked a ball all season was probably going to make kicking it a problem, but we all know that even if he had kicked 100 balls this season, kicking the ball for Dave is always a problem! Upon watching the kick many of the players thought he was practicing his grubber kicks, this was not the case. Despite the ball bouncing 831 times before stopping at the five metre line, Dave blamed a lack of wind and the fact the ball forgot to bounce high enough on his failure from the tee. 13-32 to Boro.

After a misunderstanding in the forwards at line-out time, South managed to score their second try, converting it to make the score 20-32 with not long left. Boro then killed the game when Dave Talbot made up for his poor kicking with his blistering pace, leaving the South Leicester forwards for dead! Turner converted making the final score 20-39 in Boro's favour.

It was a great start to the league for Boro, as many of the players, including the majority of the backs had never played together before. There were many strong performances, the pack as a whole was very strong and the backs also showed their class.

Special Mentions go to:
James Horrocks: Two tries, a number of good breaks and hits.
Ollie Moore: A good show at scrum half in one of his first Senior games.
Shaq Palit: A good committed performance in both the tackle and the breakdown.
Rhys Kearton: Made some big hits and boshes at full back and added a try to go with it.
Tom Peaty: A strong performance, particularly in the second half with good hits and carrying.

Man of the Match: Charlie Phillips. Despite not making any two-handed, normal passes, and taking the ball into contact a bit too much at times when there was space out wide, the big man never failed to make it past the gain line, and put many South Leicester players on their arse in both attack and defence, capping his performance off with a well taken try!

Jack Percival reckons he set up a number of tries, including scoring one himself, however I don't remember this and nobody believes him anyway.

Dave Talbot had this to say after the game: “I love Rhys.”

Rhys is still moaning about 'Man Flu'.