Return to Winning ways

Coach Ed Elbrow, on his return, asked in the pre-match discussion for passion and spirit and they were both back in abundance this week as the 2nd XV held local rivals Old Caterhamians 15-0.

Having won the toss the Old Cat's skipper decided to play with the conditions in the first half which ultimately made the difference in this very close encounter. The first half was extremely close with Cat's regularly on the attack but with excellent defensive lines and valiant tackling - Matt Partridge in particular with one challenge when faced by a three on one attack - assisted by the fall-backs decision not to move the ball and attempt a dummy.

With Andy Wright pulling the strings at 10 the team had a resolve to make yards whether ball in hand or not - there was a concern from the side-line that when he was forced to retire from the field the advantage might swing back to Cat's but Dom Barber took on the mantle with ease feeding Reece and Oli good ball so they could take it in turns to run in behind the Cat's defensive lines.

With the weather worsening, and with it the pitch, it was key to get some points on the board and Dom Barber dotted down out wide after great work from the forwards working their way up the pitch. Dom missing the difficult conversion.

5-0 at half time and Ed rolled his bench on to give an energy boost to the team with the heavy ground slowing not only the players but the ball too. Cat's found it increasingly difficult to get out of their half and in fact only managed it 5 times for any reasonable amount of time. On one occasion they managed to put together probably the best passage of play working the ball tight and then finding a gap in the midfield but the 7 pointer under the posts went begging when the final pass went forward under pressure from Liam Colgan.

Both sides started to tire in the conditions with a number of injuries being picked up. With both sides getting lazy at the breakdown on a faster pitch it could of been telling but finally after an excellent steal at the line-out by the youthful Chris Simmons the ball was moved into midfield where it was presented as quick ball and with great hands from Alex and Dom put Liam Wilson in for his debut try.

The game then swung back to Cat's who realised that they had to be the next ones to score and went back to tight lines and carries by their big runners the defence was excellent though and the result was that their pack tired badly in the final 10 minutes being shoved off the ball on nearly every one of their scrums - Skills has rarely looked troubled in his new position as loose head this season and was even leading the drives after playing the full 80 mins.

With the clock ticking down Cat's were awarded a penalty just outside their own 22 - back row Ben Gilbert having an excellent time of disrupting the ball all day getting caught - and having asked the referee (who had another impressive game) if they had time for a line-out decided to kick the ball straight to Josh Burrill covering touch on his own 10 metre line. No one was really sure what happened but his mazy-run bouncing off a number of soft tackles found himself in clear air with the posts off in front of him. anyone old enough to know a young Jim Whittington, would of thought he was back at the club as hooker Josh's little trotters barely touched the thick mud as he raced away from the covering backs to score under the posts.

Kick spurned as it was getting cold the final whistle went and the good sized crowd appreciated a very hard day at the office.

MOM - Dom Barber (backs) & Ben Gilbert (forwards)
DOD - Matt Staunton (ask him why or look at his face)