A Game of Two Halves

Yes the headline is a sporting cliché but how else do you describe the 1s being 48-5 down at half time and winning the second half 12-7?

Firstly a bit of background. Back in January we played Feltham 2s and won comfortably (28-7). However as we were missing some of the guys who played that game, a match against their combined 2/3s felt about right.

We arrived at Feltham’s ground (now complete with changing rooms) in plenty of time only to find that they were double booked. Their 2/3s were playing Old Paulines and we were playing their 1st XV. Their undefeated, top of the league 1st XV. Hmmmm this could be fun.

Having received the kick off, we started the game brightly. Rucks were quickly won and the ball was on a plate for debutant scrum half Alex Tippett. For the first 5 minutes or so, Feltham barely touched the ball as we probed their defensive line and looked for gaps.

Against the run of play, however Feltham nicked the ball from a badly controlled ruck and scampered through some shoddy tackling to score. From the kick off they were able to (far too) easily break our line again and suddenly we were two tries down.

At this point, heads dropped and we spent the majority of the half bouncing off tackles and with slow line speed. The only positives were that Feltham’s tackling was equally woeful when we did run at them and a great try from Matt Kew. From broken play, we were able to get Matt into a bit of space and he used his pace to outflank the Feltham defence.

At halftime, it is fair to say that morale was low. Having taken a couple of knocks and facing a humping, we weren’t 100% sure how much longer some of the guys could last. Fortunately we were able to call on a willing spectator (cheers Bamber!) to replace one of our injuries and after a bit of jiggling around of the team (Si Rowland showing up in the back row again) we were good to go. Now all we needed to do was go back to playing as we had done for the first 5 minutes.

And we did.

We hit the rucks in numbers, we tackled lower and we pushed harder in the scrums. As a result we were able to score a breakaway try for Steve Lewis and after battering the Feltham line repeatedly with scrums, rucks, running penalties and lineouts were finally awarded a penalty try after one infringement too many (conversion Love).

The atmosphere coming off the pitch compared with halftime was incredible and the feeling in the changing room was that this gamke marked a big change for the boys. We had showed that by playing a simple game and rucking effectively we are more than a match for a team at Feltham’s level (undefeated in HM3). With more training and consistency of player availability, there is no reason why we can’t do even better.