The new season kicked off across the club last week with the Minis and Juniors dominating both Saturday and Sunday mornings. Barnes high street was once again overwhelmed by green and gold rugby shirts which always brings a warm glow to your Chairman's heart.

Later on Saturday afternoon, Barnes 1st travelled to Clifton with hope in their heart, and talent in their boots. For 30 minutes Barnes played "the best rugby I have seen since I have been here" so said Joe Gray, our Head Coach.

Clifton had no match for our aggressive defence and direct approach which created holes in the Clifton line. After sustained pressure Nick Van Buuren put No:8 Alex Hind clean through. With Josh Hammett slotting the simple kick Barnes led 3 - 7 after 9 minutes. 9 minutes later, Cameron Ruddock stormed through from a lineout near the halfway line and set up a try for scrum-half Josh Davies, which Josh Hammett again converted from wide out - the score now Clifton 3 - Barnes 14 after 18 minutes. At this stage, Barnes were in total control. 5 minutes later, more Barnes pressure forced errors in the Clifton defence, after several phases Captain George Hunter forced his way over and Barnes extending their lead to 3-21 with 15 minutes to go to half time. We switched off then for 10 minutes, which allowed the home team time to settle, score twice and begin to believe in themselves. With five minutes of the half remaining, Clifton clawed themselves back to trail 17-21 - worse still, the talismanic Matt Steele was yellow-carded. Despite this handicap, Barnes bounced back, and breaks by Alex Hind and Josh Davies set up hooker Cameron Ruddock for his first try on his debut for Barnes. With the extras grabbed by Josh Hammett, Barnes led 17-28 at half time, with a four-try bonus point to boot.

As the second half started Barnes were still down to 14 men, as Steeler served out the rest of his 10-minute rest. This signalled a strong start from Clifton, who came out hard and fast following the beak, but it was nip and tuck, with only a penalty swapped between the teams, until seven minutes (of normal time!) to go, when the Clifton fly-half, ironically named Barnes, jinked through to score and convert to bring the score to within 4 points, 27-31, as we clung onto our lead, but we were now well under the cosh!

Clifton camped on our line and drilled away at us, scrum after scrum, we conceded three penalties and eventually the referee had had enough and yellow-carded George Hunter. With our other prop injured Barnes oped for unopposed scrums, but of course under newish law changes this means you have to also lose a further player so you don't make it an unfair election to go unopposed (as in you remove the oppositions weapon if they dominated the scrum - which of course Clifton were). Despite some heroic defence, Clifton ground us down and scored in the final minute of a 63 minute half to win 34-31.

I have to ask how can a second half last 63 minutes with over 40 minutes actual playing time? I am not complaining but this definitely did not favour us!

Obviously the lads were gutted, but all present witnessed a very gutsy performance which showed great promise for the season ahead. We will lick our wounds, and come back hard this weekend as we play our first home game at Barn Elms against Esher, whom we have never played previously in a league game.

We know they will be strong, we know they have recruited heavily in the Summer, we know they have one of our Vice-Presidents, Peter Winterbottom, as their Director of Rugby and we know that they will be mightily miffed to have been pipped by Redruth 10-8 last week - but whilst we know all that they don't know us! They have never played Barnes at 1st XV level, and we will be ready for them on Saturday, that is for sure. It is a 3 pm kick-off so please be there if you can to support Barnow, it means a huge amount to the players.

In the two other games last weekend Barnes were in dominant form.

On Saturday the Occies travelled to Hammersmith and Fulham and thumped them 33 - 52 in a high scoring encounter, whilst the Ladies 1st XV we very impressive, steam rollering Rosslyn Park Slingbacks 67-14. You can read a full report on the Barnes website and in essence we were cruising 38-0 up at half-time and won easily in the end with fantastic team-work getting great results, everyone putting their hand up to make powerful carries, running support lines, and putting in some crunching tackles in defence. Kirsty Openshaw, the new Head Coach for the Ladies must have been positively beaming with delight!

This weekend at Barnes RFC

There are four games this weekend for you to enjoy:

On Saturday 14th September:

Barnes 1st XV vs Esher 1st XV - 3 pm KO
Barnes 2nd XV vs Esher 2nd XV - 2:30 pm KO

And on Sunday 15th September:

London Welsh vs Barnes Ladies 1st XV - 2:30 pm KO
Barnes Ladies 2nd XV vs Dartfordians 2nd XV

Please do try and come down to support your club this weekend, it is going to be a crackerjack of a weekend!

Good luck to all teams playing, may you play in the original spirit that we embrace at Barnes RFC, and here's to four big wins!

Onwards and Upwards Barnow!

Michael "Rhino" Whitfield