Close competitive game just slips away at the end.

This week Bishops Stortford hosted 4 teams at home (1s,2s, 4s & 5s) and funnily enough a lot more players were available! This boded well, and we started with a decent looking team, with an additional 2 forwards on the bench. Enfield appeared to be a younger team than the last game, so we looked forward to seeing how this game went.

We won the toss, played with the wind, and they kicked to us. The kick fell well short, and we took the scrum to restart the game. Bearing in mind the 4s tradition of letting teams score and then trying to catch up, this clearly hadn’t been explained to Dave Brunner and Tom Bains playing his first senior game at full back. From the scrum, Brunner picked and went, drew 2 – 3 players, offloaded to Mark Brown, who made several meters before passing to Tom who ran in down the line from the 22 to score in the corner, unfortunately slightly beyond the range of the resurgent Johnny Lewis.

Clearly this had a very uplifting effect on our team, and whilst I may have been in shock at this point from our start, I believe that very quickly after this we had another scrum near the middle of the pitch – and again the combination of Brunner picking and going offloading to Browney who somehow defied all expectations and slipped Will Greenwood like through defenders and then had the presence of mind to run almost to the posts to touch down. Mr Lewis then added the conversion, for 12-0 after about 5 mins.

Enfield by now must have woken up, or this may have coincided with the irreplaceable Diddy going off with what turned out to be a badly fractured thumb requiring surgery, and the rest of the first half consisted of our pack just having the edge other than the referee who after about 20 minutes had clearly taken a dislike to our style of play for some reason. We received a lot of penalties for not rolling away at the tackle, and one or 2 slightly dafter moments (Aaron) including sides of rucks, and trying to kick the ball away from near the back of the ruck, unfortunately when not part of said ruck. Other mistakes, such as the so far well playing Browney dropping the ball under no pressure), but to be fair, whilst I obviously don’t share the same perspective as this person, I think our biggest problem was the referee who clearly saw the rules differently to our previous referees judging the by huge number of penalties. Fortunately their kicker wasn’t top drawer, and so we went into half time 12 – 0 up (I think!)

The second half however was a very different matter. We had 2 players sent off – Aaron for continued infringements around the ruck, and possibly for being offside following a kick, making no effort to retreat, and then tackling their player; and far less fairly for Mr Brunner for a late tackle that he didn’t actually make. I personally was given a penalty against me for trying to rip the ball from a player tackled and holding onto the ball on my feet, and being penalised for not letting go after a tackle (I was not involved in). These yellow cards, increasing frustration at the referee, and what is becoming a bit of a problem for this team in terms of letting our heads down allowed Enfield to pile pressure on, and other than Johnny Lewis early 2nd half penalty taking us to 15, we essentially absorbed pressure from Enfield for the entire 2nd half.

A further knock on from Brownie, who otherwise (I hate to say) had an outstanding game including playing with I’m told, “a jolly sore hand”, and Ryan Roberts failing to jump whilst being the single pod in the lineout (and rightly, but amusingly being bollocked by Russ) in addition did not help our feeling of this being our day and heads did not really get up in the second half.

Enfield with due pressure scored a variety of points via 3 tries and a heart crushing penalty with about 2 minutes to go, and so won the game.
Positive were a very stout defence with many huge tackles, dominant scrumming and lineouts, and when given ball showed that we could do very well with it. Negatives unfortunately included allowing a close game to be lost because our heads drop and some players I feel expect to lose these games now. The referee certainly didn’t help our cause, but whilst I feel his interpretation of why he kept penalising us and his view of the tackle area that he gave me immediately after losing the game was unfair (and somewhat untimely), we do need to learn to stop getting on the wrong side of the game and ref. He did however say we played rugby better than some teams 3 leagues above us, which whilst not much consolation was very opaque silver lining.

In the most gutting match to lose in a long time, Man of the match went to (unfortunately) Brownie for his help in 1 try, scoring the other try, and playing his heart out in defence of our scoreline.

Dick of the day goes to Ryan, partly because he hasn’t had it before, and partly because he was the only jumper in the line and managed not to! 1 crate of alcoholic beverages from you at your next match please mate.

Thanks to Enfield for a very tight game, and best wishes to Diddy for a speedy recovery.

Chris