As the 2’s assembled in the changing rooms before kick off against Beckenham two things became apparent; firstly, they only had 12 players; secondly, and more importantly, the 12 players who had turned up fancied it. It had been a week since AG’s last rumble and accordingly he had some pent up f’ing and jeffing to expend. Chris O’Malley was returning from injury and he could tell it was a day for a ball playing prop. And Riley, well Riley always fancies it. Jack Stamp did what any good 2’s captain does and stole some players from the threes and as the clock struck 3 the mighty 2’s took to the field with 15 men.
There were only two moments of doubt in the ensuing 80 minutes. The first came from the first kick off when the entire Colfes pack failed to tackle Beckenhams big lad and had to rely on one of the smaller lads on the field to bring him down to prevent an embarrassing start. After that faltering beginning, the Colfes composed themselves and did what a team who’s had to scrape a team together generally fails to do and dominated the set piece. The first scrum led to a penalty. The lineout from that penalty led to a try.
From then on the first half was almost all one way traffic. The forward pack worked tirelessly to get round the corner and offer their captain willing ball carriers from the ruck. The back line did much the same, with centres and wingers rolling in from across the paddock to bash it through the midfield. The try’s kept coming and shortly before the half the team decided it was time to inject a bit of champagne into proceedings and a midfield scrum saw the ball worked to the right hand side of the field, then all the way to the left wing and then back to the right wing into the willing hands of AG who shrugged off a couple of defenders to dot down in the corner for a true team try.
There was perhaps a bit too much champagne in that try as just before the half the Colfes conceded a somewhat wet try by letting Beckenham roll over from short range. Even still when the ref blew up and announced that the half time score was 22-10 to Colfes no one could quite believe it given how dominant the performance had been.
At half time the veterans of the team counselled caution and encouraged a disciplined start to the second half. It was only right therefore that the second moment of doubt in the game came from the Beckenham kick off to the second half, when a cacophony of errors led to the Colfes conceding a 5m scrum. However, scrummaging had been one of the central platforms to Colfes dominance of the first half and this continued at the start of the second and the Colfes successfully defended their line and relieved the pressure.
Colfes continued to develop what they’d done in the first half with strong carries from the ruck. As this continued to suck in the opposition pack it became time to start releasing the gas men and so Chris O’Malley started retreating to 12 to release key pace attack Sam. The tactic worked so effectively that AG decided to get himself and the opposition hooker sin binned to free up a bit more space on the pitch so the Colfes wide men could take further advantage.
When the referee blew up at full time two more things became apparent: Beckenham had had a thoroughly torrid time of things whilst the Colfes had had a lovely time of it. Final score: 34-10/41-10/44-10 depending on who you ask. The important point to note being, could Jack Stamp kick it would have been considerably more impressive. Up the Colfes. Go well.
