More than just a game....

I know 18th January seems a bit late to be conveying the same, but yours truly has been otherwise detained, so my apologies for the absence of last weeks match report, a fixture which saw the opening of 2015 for Harrodians. So for those of you who have nagged me on this one here is a brief update!

With London Scottish still struggling with haggis indigestion they had to bow out of our scheduled match though our immensely capable fixtures secretary, Jane Graham, found us fodder in the form of Belsize Park 4s !

Unfortunately many Vets were also still struggling with indigestion and Harrodians Vice,
Gus, tried his hardest to pull a side together and by Friday morning we had only 15. Worst still the rest of Friday was spent Horse Trading the Sean 'Machine' Gibson between Spence and Gus, (the 3s needed Sean for their fixture too!). I have kept the email exchange which I will auction at the next fund raising event.......framed and in colour.....classic!

Anyway Saturday arrived and the oppo were as keen as mustard having started their warm up very early on. Of course on closer inspection it became apparent that Jane had obviously become distracted by the team photos and selected the fixture because they were all so young! Yes chaps! We had unshaved youngsters to chase around for 70 minutes!

Anyway we weren't up for that so decided to give the youngsters a lesson in 'old school' and gave them a thumping lesson in hard hits! 33 - 7 should do it!
Tries to Cris Pini x 2 Nick Hamilton and Russ x 1 with 4 cons from Merek.

And so turning to a very genuine Vets side we had Quins hosting us at the sumptuous St Mary's university campus.

This time we were a stronger squad of 20, (with Sean Gibson!) and very much up for this fixture as our previous encounter against them had been a closely contested win for us. A very effective warm up was respectfully followed by a minutes silence for the late Wayne Carter of Harlequins Vets. I know nothing of Wayne, but as a Quins Vet, he must certainly have been a Gentleman made of a resilient determination and passionate commitment, just like the side who kicked off to us.

Quins were a much larger outfit with a few big lads who were keen to run with the ball and make a few hard yards. From the start we had to patiently absorb some enthusiastic pressure before we soon took control of proceedings!

In the lineout we again dominated with Big Al and Sean giving us some very useful options although we did make a few avoidable errors which we must eliminate in future key games. Surprisingly some Lineouts provided us with very effective attacking mauls which Quins took a while to react to.

In the scrums we had to work very hard to control our own ball and their larger size put us under sustained pressure, in fact typing this on a Sunday evening is still hard work for yours truly as their loose head enjoyed trying to spoil my good looks!! Didn't work obviously!

So with the set pieces functioning fairly well the game was fought most aggressively at the break down! I had previously reminded the boys that the ruck had to be our area to dominate and I have to hand it to Quins, they made it very hard for us to achieve that. In part because our well meaning ref was squinting every time he wrote down the score in his little note pad so the rest of the match often seemed to be a blur, but also because Quins vacillated between competing really fairly and effectively or simply falling on the ball!

Though when we won our ball, be it from the scrum, lineout or ruck we looked outstanding!
The backs were sublime and ran lines with interlinking play from the pack that made life impossible for Quins to live with. In fact their body language soon looked demoralised after try number two went over!
The big Quins units soon started to tire and we used the tempo leading the first half three tries to nil!

We knew though that Quins would not give up and they didn't.

Early in to the second half they sneaked over for a well worked try, or an intercept....can't remember! But any way Quins had discovered a bit of belief and we had to up our game in order to keep them out and quickly scored again keeping the margin at 26 - 5 for the remainder of the game, yet in the last seconds Quins scored a well deserved try to make it 26 - 12!

Quins could have inflicted more damage upon us and it still feels more like a 26 - 24 win, though its testament to every single Harrodian Vet for playing with such gritted determination and raising the bar when needed. We have re discovered our form!

A few beers were had afterwards at the local Waldgrave Arms and the hospitality was spot on. Yours truly had to make an early exit in order to keep on track with my on-going self improvement programme of avoiding use of the word 'sorry' in discussions with my new found Manager!

Though as I drove down the A3 my thoughts drifted to contemplate Wayne Carter and his family; he would have been proud of his Quins boys today as they played in true Vets style and gave us a game to be equally proud of.....God rest his soul.

Skips/Finche
18/01/15

Tries Ed x 2 JC and Morgs x 1 Cons Marek x 4

The team was.....
Forwards: Marty, Ron Jeremy, JC, Ed, Skips, Brucie, James L, Beans, Big Al, Gibbo, Deano, Nick B
Backs: Frodo, Gus, Marek, Cris, Morgs, Russ, A’fer, Nick H, Slatts
Next week we entertain London Irish at home......