Coming off the back of a frustrating loss to Charlton Park last week, OC’s welcomed Heathfield & Waldron to Horn Park aiming to right a few of the wrongs from last week’s encounter.
The weather suggested this would be one for the purists. Grey skies and a pretty constant drizzle meant wide, expansive footie wasn’t going to be easy (even Seb “Big Business” Williams was toying with the idea of dusting off his studs).
OC’s opted to receive the kick but were slow out of the blocks for the first 20 minutes. H&W were running well, and looked good defensively – chopping down our big runners early. Their line-speed meant they came away with two early penalties and went 6 points ahead.
After the early flurry from the opposition, O.C’s held onto the ball and began to play a bit. The set-piece was still working well, and there were positive signs when a rolling maul was stopped just short of their try-line, having started just inside the 22.
The pressure began to pay off shortly after, as despite continued good defence from the H&W line, OCs scored a couple of well worked tries and went into half time 17-8 ahead.
Whilst the greasy conditions and some general lack of discipline were frustrating aspects of the Colfe’s game-plan after the start of the second, but once the team began to account for the rain the scoreline started to build in our favour.
Continued dominance up-front allowed for tries from Andy O’Malley and Tom Rameaux, and laid the platform for some lovely scores out wide. As fatigue kicked in things really began to open up towards the end of the second half. A couple more tries came from some good support-running out in the backs, and it ended with OC’s being awarded penalty try from the scrum (the most glamorous score of the match). Final score 52-8.
Far from a perfect performance, but some real points of improvement from last week. Also worth mentioning were some cracking individual performances from M.O.M Andy O’Malley, as well as Carlos Davies and Bill Ramdhan on their senior debuts.
AUTHOR – Adam Whitaker
