I think we can safely say that Sat's game against Old Paulines off the Fixture Bureau was far from the match that their Fixture Sec. had promised us. We have discovered that they had three sides cry off and the side we played was a mixture of their second and third team we the odd first team player!!

We did well to hold the score to a respectable defeat of 35 to 3 points!.

We had a number of the big guns still off and this did show up in our general control of the set piece and the forward rushed that have been part of our game for the last few months!

Also the three fastest players on the park ....JT at wing, Michael Bianchi wing and Jamie at fullback and then at wing when we moved Jt into centre never had the ball!!

Our game of move the ball wide never happened and in the past our wingers have notched a good number of tries every match.

What went wrong?

Well, we did well in the lineout and Steve jumped well and Deano found him without too much trouble. The set piece was a nightmare as the oppo had an old grissly that kept boring in....We then lost S.A.Simon at w/forward and with it a good degree of weight. the scrum was wheeling all over the place and yet another chane with Mark " Bull" Patterson moving up to front row.

Steve also moved across and we seem to stabalise a litte.

Ben at scrumhalf played his usual game and moved the ball around but somehow the ball seem to be slow and not reaching the wingers.

Both our coach, Tony B, on the touchline and the referee afterwards mentioned that the ball was getting bogged dwon in the centre and they would both have liked to have seen the ball moving out to the wingers and then for the centres to back up.

Just an observation but one that we should take on board and try and play our wide game that hase resulted in many tries over thr last few months.

Matt tacked very well at fullback and made some good try scoring saves. Tom Wood was his usual all the park , my names Back, play. Roger was solid as usual but we did have some very good opposition.

Their strength was to move the ball rapidly accross the park and their wingers ran in the tries.

OK chaps that is as much as we need say about this game and we must learn
from it and move ahead for next Sat.

Cheers

Colin