Another frustrating day for the Meda 1st XV with a disappointing loss to Old Amplefordians. Due to some last minute pull outs (I never thought I would be saying that in rugby terms!) there had to be some changes to the starting 15, fortunately for us Calvin pitched up with his boots and togged out on the wing. Franco also got his first start in the back row and there was a welcome return made by Adam. Starting the game with just 15 players and no subs it was always going to be a tough match.
After conceding an extremely soft first try in the opening minutes, and a yellow card to Adam for his attempted slide tackle on their first try scorer. We regrouped well. Calvin displayed great pace by in the opening 15 minutes, breaking several tackles but unfortunately had to come off when his knee popped. Right on cue, Baron arrived to make his season debut. We made a couple of decent breaks and Will was bursting through the first up tackles from full back and we made some good ground off Phil’s persistent crash balls up the middle.
Some real issues around the breakdown in terms of support and counter rucking lost us momentum we had built, and several missed tackles down the wing let the opposition in for another soft try. We looked the stronger team in the first half, especially up front with strong work in the scrum and winning most of our own lineouts, and poor ball retention meant a poor first half by our standards.
We looked a little more up for it in the second half and there was some decent work around the park but again we let ourselves down with some loose passing. The pack stamped their dominance again by pushing over a scrum from 5 out (I think we awarded a penalty try but Adam definitely got downward pressure before the ref blew the whistle.) Looking stronger and beginning to build momentum, who would have guessed it, but another couple of missed tackles led to a third try for the opposition.
We dug in and poor discipline from the opposition led to a series of penalties which Will dispatched 100% of to put us right back in the game and to within 5 points. An inability to convert our 5 metre pressure to points with sloppy passing late on was telling in the end and cost us heavily both territorially and on the scoreboard. One example, I’m not too proud of was from a turn over scrum on our own 5 and I passed (poorly) to George and that fell into the oppositions hands for an easy try. We failed to capitalise on the last 10minutes with the oppositions number 7 in the sin bin, and a couple of late tries from Old Amplefordians made the final score an unjustly heavy defeat.
We did a lot of things right on the day and we were very unfortunate to lose this one, everything we tried to do in the OA’s 22 didn’t go to hand. We had the majority of the possession and we did play quite intelligently. Franco showed some really good leg strength in the mauls and around the park. Phil deputised at first centre well in the absence of some of our front line backs – although we want him back in the back ASAP! I was particularly impressed with our front 5 who bossed the oppo’s scrum. Chris was his usual militant self, coordinating the pack! It was also great to have Nelly back for lifting in the lineouts and solid scrummaging. George was also putting himself around the park.
The entire team felt hard done by at the end of the game which at least puts a mark down for our own expectations for the season. If we can continue to get the same group of players on the park every week, results will start to turn in our favour. This was a typical early season match with plenty room for improvement.
This is a really exciting time of the season lads, so lets make the effort to get to training and get the names down on the team sheet for next week!
Nick C
