Pennant League , 1st Mar 2008

Hamians 51 - Meden Vale 7

Saturday saw the Hamians 2nd team take on Meden Vale in an attempt to come back from back to back league defeats. The first time this had happened this season.
We knew they were keen to play by the fact that it was supposed to be away and with a lack of pitch had offered to come to us instead. They arrived 5 mins after the official kick off time with 10 players!! After we lent them 4 players and adapted the rules slightly we kicked off at about 14.45

Hamians started as Jon Williams, Craig, Dom, Rory, Parko, Conway, Tommy Vass, Steveo, Mark, Moo, Pikey Jnr, Matt, Cluseau, Gollum and Mark
Players lent to Vale were Phil, Stu, Jesus and Nathan

Hamians kicked off and Jon Williams had trouble adjusting to the gale force winds by kicking straight out. Scrum to Vale but as they had no recognised front row it was uncontested. Hamians soon regained possession and made progress up field where the opening try arrived shortly from leading points scorer Steve Conway under the posts. He converted to give a 7-0 lead. The first half was mostly all in the Vale end of the pitch and good rucking and pretty much uncontested lineouts by the forwards soon created chances. With the gusty winds, short simple passes were the key and 5 tries were created. Two of which through good breaks and unselfish passing from Pikey Jnr. Scorers were Matt, James Parks, Craig (2) and Dom. Conversions were a different story as only one of those was completed. This gave a very one sided halftime score line of 34-0

A first half team talk of not getting complacent and improving on this already vast score were the orders of Captain Cluseau. To try and assist Meden Vale we gave them Jon Williams to give them a 15-14 player advantage.

Referee Hoops, also started playing a lot of advantage with the increasingly difficult wind conditions and this helped Vale to play some of the second half in our end. There dogged determination finally resulted in a deserved try as we seemed to have gone to sleep. This spurred us back into life and much better play resulted in Dom going over again before Tommy Vass and Steveo completed the try scoring for the game. From the poor first half conversion efforts, Cluseau decided it was time to show them how it was done by slotting over from about 5 yards to the right of the posts against the wind. Were it not for Jesus foiling Cluseau in the dying seconds by knocking the ball out of his hands when only a yard from the line it would have been a ten try win. Final score however was 51-7 and so we return to the top of the league albeit cos Ilkeston didn't have a game.

Next week is away to bottom side Ollerton. Did anyone mention “potential banana skin”?