We all thought back to last week's game against Lockside that has been put down as one of our great games this season.
Every week we are fielding 15 highly enthusiastic players who enjoy Bulldog rugby and the close games we are playing. Saturday was such a game.
We had 15 and 3 subs but by kick off we had lost 3 players! Malcolm had done a few press ups at the gym and could no longer bend which for a prop is a problem, Will had got pissed on Friday and Matt looked very rough with the flu. That put Lord Lenthall into the frame as No 8!!
Old Isleworthians fielded a young side in their early 20's and a few old grizzlies in the scrum
We had our usual mix of ages and sizes.....four big forwards, a mobile hooker,and a lively back row. Good fast and "take em on " outsides with Roger the Boot at No 10 with Dom feeding him well at scum half and Ross, the Rock , at fullback. What a tidy team sheet.
We lost the toss and the opp elected to receive the ball. The opposition moved quickly across the park but came to a shuddering halt when stopped by the tacking of The Bulldog outsides. We re-cycle the ball, the forwards drove ahead , as per the game plan, and sucked in the defence and then a quick distribution of the ball and it reached JT, " The Train", who just put his head down , and gave a couple of well aimed handoffs and powered his way over for the first of his three tries!!
Old Isleworthians came back hard and worked their way thorough pace and handling to score a well worked try.
The play was very even but slowly we started to get back on top through some good jumping in the lineout that once again enabled us to move the ball down the line but the defence was good and it was no easy task to score tries! The next try was perhaps one of the best ones we have seen for a while and it was so reminiscent of the great Jamie tries.
The ball had been pushed ahead from a forward rush by Len supported by the big three of Rupert, Scotty and Steve with Deano also in hot pursuit. Dom worked the ball back and out it went to Roger who passed it to Mike and then onto JT who went off on one of his bustling runs but ran out of space but found Iron Man 2 in the shape of Michael Bianchi, playing his second game for The Bulldogs.Mike took the pass and then weaved his way through four or five of the defence to work his way to the goal post and although finally tacked he scored a perfect try.
Back to the game and the restart and this time the scores were very close and at one point only 2 points in it. This made for a thrilling last 20 minutes or so and Roger, the boot, kept pushing the opposition back with fantastic pin point kicking along the touchline. The game plan worked and again a fine try came from such as move.
We had a lineout in our favour about 20 yards out from the try line. The Pinky call was well called and Deano threw the ball to Rupert at No 1 in the lineout, Rupert took the ball well and went charging for the try line with a huge determination and knocking a few players out of his way before he found Len backing him up and a quick pass and Len was over for again a very impressive try.
The forwards played a magnificent game taking on the opposition all the time with a very powerful drive with the four big forwards,Len , Scotty, Rupert and Steve all constantly driving ahead and giving good ball to our outsides.Mike Buckley tacked well and Ian on the other wing constantly chased up the many well paced kicks from Roger and nearly ran a try in.
In the last 10 minutes we moved ahead and started to pull away and the score moved to the 30's leaving Old Isleworthians at 22.
The final try came from again another back row move with the ball being passed from Steve to Lord Lenthall who then found Len with one more a try on the end of it from Deano.
Final score The Bulldogs 41 (7 tries 4 conversions by Roger) to 22 points for Old Isleworthians
Try scorers, JT ( 3) , Dom (1), Mike Bianchi (1) Len ( 1) Deano (1)
A great game and one that the opposition also enjoyed and the ref .....well, nice chap.
Cheers
Colin