Atrocious weather conditions leads to a half time cancellation, and 0 - 0 draw.

This time we couldn’t complain about the endless rain in England, as it was snowing…

Waking on the morning of the game and seeing a good covering of the white stuff led to me contact Hendon to ensure the game was on. They checked the pitch was playable, the lines could be seen, and then advised me the game was on…

So down trundled a lot of fairly hardy souls to enter the realm of the changing room cleaner outer from last year, (bags, keys, even boxer shorts were stolen – not by someone from Hendon I hasten to add), down the M11 through constant snow and an awful lot of puddles, which was unfortunately precisely what their pitch looked like.

Before kick off, even the referee said that for the first time, he would rather be dragged round the shops, before playing in a beany hat, and desperate to prove his indestructability, Gilo dived into puddles at least 3 times before the game kicked off whilst practicing lineouts.

The game kicked off with an abysmal drop kick by me, because the ball just squelched into the mud. From there it very quickly became how crucially important our forwards would be as the Hendon pack was strong, but our backs were much, much better, to the point where they only ran once, choosing to kick every other ball, one of which went straight into touch, slightly backwards from where he kicked it whilst ours looked genuinely threating (and not in a dark alley sort of way).

After about 15 minutes the first casualty of the happened, somehow a boot connecting with Brian Finches nose to not so delicately reshape it. He left the field to attend hospital to make himself look beautiful by way of a more symmetrical face again, and Clarkey came on to replace him on the flank and throwing in. The first throw nearly made it halfway into the pitch, after which I discovered he could add lineout throwing to his bag of tricks. At this point, the now not so indestructible Gilo, having ended up swallowing lots of mud face first at the bottom of a ruck took a couple of minutes to get back up from his puddle, and when he did, he was very very cold. 2 minutes later the referee took him off rightly as he was getting dangerously cold, to be replaced by Ryan Roberts.

Very shortly after this, their scrum half had to go off followed imminently by their flanker, both replaced by players hiding in the club house up till this point. The final change was 10 minutes later when Jake had a recurrence of his rib injury so departed the field bringing on the ‘Daz White Challenge’ that was Conor.

In the meantime however, one lapse on our behalf had led to their very wide second row forcing his way through too many tackles, and managing to score a (very good) solo effort, converted by them. It is fair to say this was against the run of play, and as the first half approached the end, we were becoming more and more dominant. Players to mention in particular Perry and Grazzer who had a sterling day at the office with hard running and tackling in atrocious conditions, and the entire pack who were getting stronger and stronger.

At half time however, the referee blew his whistle and decided with so many players getting so cold, he was to call a half to proceedings, thus ending the game. For those of you who are not aware, I have decided not to apply for the rematch, and so it is classed as a draw, thankfully lifting us out of the bottom two.

The final lowlight of the day, unfortunately was to be Rob Neal, who after his warming shower leant forward to pick his pants up, put his back out. The ambulance arrived in about 20 minutes and after a plentiful supply of gas and air and a quick assessment by a doctor in A&E, he was able to resume normalish movements (for him). With the season being so close to the end, we may not see him running round a pitch again (this year), and if so a huge thanks for your commitment on return from your knee injury!

A massive thanks to everybody who travelled down to Hendon, and in all reality to the ref for using his common sense and stopping the game. It really was one of those “you had to be there” days to appreciate it!

Man of the match I think had to go to Graham Pearman, and whilst everybody had a justified claim to it this week, nobody else ran though about 8 tackles from our 22 to theirs. Well played mate.

Chris