Amersham too good for Southgate

Long gone is the assumption that forwards aren’t as smart as backs. A few weeks ago Jack used the word “Pontificate” which left many at Stevenage Town scratching their heads. On the night before this weeks game, Sam traded in his favourite 4 letter word, and instead used the term Hodophobia. For those who are unsure, Hodophobia is a fear of travelling, which sums up our season all too well. This week we just about scraped to get 13 players together to make the trip to Amersham and Chiltern (with Stav making it for Half Time to bring us up to 14). Thanks to Amersham for lending us players so we could try and make it an even contest. But it was always gonna be an uphill struggle against a team who were coming off the back of their first loss of the season.

So far this season we have more than matched every team in the tight, however we have continued to be exposed out wide by a lot of young quick players, who have taken the advantage of their wide pitches, and us struggling to get across the park. The contest was close in the first half, with both teams making plenty of handling errors, which meant lots of scrums. But despite our great defensive effort, we managed to concede three break away tries.

In the second half as we got tired, and as our heads started to drop, the floodgates opened (as seems to have been the trend this season). Our sole 5 points came from an unlikely source. Off one of our few good attacking opportunities of the game, including some good running from Stef, a quick tap from Sam, and a few pick and goes, I managed to score (which I think takes my tally for the club to 3 tries in about 6 years). I would like to pretend it was a majestic 60 metre run, but really I just picked up the ball from half a metre out and fell over the line. The other positive move from the game was another strong Southgate driving maul, which must have gone a good 30 metres.

As mentioned earlier there were lots of scrums which I was stuck in the middle of, so forgive me for not seeing everything in the game. Although perhaps the one thing I did spot was their ginger lads, one on the flank, and one in the centre. They both had really good games, to the point that some of our guys didn’t know there was two of them. Most of us put 2 and 2 together when we realised that there’s no way that he could jump in the line out, and then be taking a crash ball in the centre. Although some of the guys didn’t realise until the post match handshakes.

Thanks to Amersham for hosting us, and thank you to those who came across to fill the numbers, particularly Liam who played the full game for us. And thanks to the 14 of us who made it to the game. Win, Lose or Draw, we are the heartbeat of this club.

Richard, Sam, Michael, Peter, Nick (1T), Conal, Shane, Colin, Dan, Stef, Chris, Eoghan, Brad, Stav (40 mins)