Wandsworthians 27 - Egham Hollowegians 0 (29/09/07)
Preparation for the game was somewhat disjointed with a number of regulars attending the KCL reunion fixture, injured or unavailable. A new-look back line took to the field with Roch filling in at 10, Ross Haddow starting at 9 and John Dawson-Ellis filling in for Rob at 15. Jim Grant stepped into the front row from second row to support Kieran who was recently out of hospital at hooker and looked it - big credit for playing the game at all.
With half the team playing out of position it was never going to be pretty, but the Dubs started strongly and had the better of the early exchanges. Good 2nd phase ball from the rucks and mauls (which was a feature of the whole game) saw a couple of good scores, the pick of which was a ball through the hands to Posh who went over in the left corner. A cynical knees-first tackle on him by the opposition 12 after he had grounded the ball led to a fairly heated exchange which saw Ash earn his first (and hopefully last) spell in the sin bin for uneccessarily joining in late. Credit to the opposition 12 for later apologising to Posh, who managed to continue although I imagine he's walking a bit crooked this morning. The sin bin meant the penalty we would have had from the restart was lost and we faced the rest of the half with 14 men. Egham mounted a few attacks, mainly through their forwards but did not manage to take advantage of the extra man. Half time saw us 19-0 ahead and finished with the opposition no.10 leaning against the clubhouse wall spewing vast amounts of leftover alcohol - someone who clearly didn't take it easy the night before a league game.
The second half started with a brief to move the ball out wide as the Dubs backs had looked capable of scoring on most occasions they had received ball, with Chris running freely, Darren carrying the ball up the middle well and John increasingly coming into the line at pace and very unfortunate not to score on several occasions. With Ash restored to the field, the forwards were enjoying their dominance and were guilty at times of going a phase too far and trying to batter their way over when the easy points were out wide. Eventually the ball did come out for Neil, loitering on the wing, to canter over unopposed. There were so many occasions when the back line was virtually undefended we should have scored a hatfull but that's a lesson to take away - 9 and 10 have to boss the forwards and demand the ball.
From the safety of the touchline I thought it was a well contested game with some flashes of very good play, and with first choice players in place we can only get better. Man of the Match for me would have been Ash Ali who had a great game at flanker, but a sin bin obviously cancels that out and he goes in the Rogues Gallery instead once Tanya sends me the photo!
(Match report by Mark Lucy)
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