Old Yardleians RFC: Club News
AWAY AGAIN BUT A HAPPIER JOURNEY HOME
Mon, 23 Sep 2013 04:06
A much better performance
As I decided to watch our Hornets over at Hopwood, I relied on the observational skills of Mark, the Old Yard's equivalent to Stuart Barnes or Austin Healy to bring back news of our First XV. When I got him to answer his phone, he mentioned something about quantity of beer combined with mild memory loss and that he would get in touch very soon.
According to Mark it was a much better performance than the previous week but we took the foot off the pedal and almost lost it in the closing minutes.
In brief, we took an early lead with a try for winger Carl Bucknall which Jake converted. He also scored a penalty to give us a 10-0 lead. However, Upton had a secret weapon, a number 8 who could do the lot. He broke out of defence and covered almost the length of the pitch, and then gave a perfect scoring pass to a supporting player which with the conversion brought the score back to 10-7. Jake landed another penalty but the same said Upton star scored another try which was converted, bringing the half time score to 13-14 in their favour.
The second half saw the Ys exert much greater control with set piece dominance giving us the chance to cut loose. Tries followed from Adam Walker and Tom Grocott with a conversion from Jake taking the score to25-14 to us. With very little time remaining, could we throw it away? Well, we came close to doing so, allowing Upton to score two late tries. Thankfully, their kicker had not read his manual, 'Great goalkicking' by Power, Adams and Cullen.
Final score a win for Old Yards by the massive margin of one point, 25-24. Next weekend a home match? Sorry boys, Shrewsbury away.
Development xv
Similar to Big Mark, Luke was stuck for words to articulate his feelings after winning at Dudley Kingswinford by 47-7. There was a whisper going around that our new, super-mobile hooker scored two tries of considerable quality. I don't know you yet but welcome to our club.
Hornets
I could not resist the trip to Five Ways RFC to watch Old Griffs First Team take on our 4ths (Hornets)
I had hoped that it would never happen, but with our Kindergarten Kids all busy on university enticement days and with our Last of the summer wine group being forced at gunpoint to go shopping, we only just managed to field 15 players. It would have been 16 but Griffs couldn't produce a referee so the leading official of Midlands rugby took the whistle.
We had enough good players to have won the game but to me, the more senior players are a little unsure if they should pass to our younger, fitter and faster players. work it out fellas!
We had enough chances to have continued our winning sequence but our only try scored by Sean following a great break from Charlie which was converted by Fitzy from the touchline was not quite enough on the day.
And Finally
I will let you know the fixture situation towards the end of the week.
If we stay so high up the table for much longer Mr Wenger will have nose bleeds to deal with.