Barnes v East London on Sunday 13/ 9/ 15
Joyce Fahy
What do you get when you mix a bloody nose, a black eye, screaming girls with threats of fights (next Tuesday) and a broken bra strap? Barnes versus East London Rugby Ladies on a Sunday league game in West Ham, of course! Like, duh!
I can’t say much about the atmosphere before the match because I left my house late, then realised I’d forgotten my mouth guard, sooo I went backwards on the tube to buy a new one and just arrived in time to play. But judging by the Dick of the Match award, Mr Dave sir joked about forgetting the jerseys, so I think there was a little stress beforehand.
The first league match of the season began with three substitutions on our team, acting as fabulous water girls on the side! It was an exciting first half. There were some complaints about the American referee but I was too confused as my first game as a forward ever / first game in a year, to notice anything else but my crazy high tackles and inability to stay onside.
The first half was all scrums. And we played contested scrums until Dreadlocks decided to get her nose bust up… We were pretty all right at contested scrums, riiiight?
Don’t ask me for numbers and sir names, but we scored some scores! Dibs plummeted her way through East London skilfully and scored Barnes’ first try of the season. Fran followed with a diving try in the corner and built our confidence by the end of the first half.
As we sipped Rachael’s unending supply of Lucozade at half time, we realised they had a number 8 that was, emm, difficult to bring down. But our team mission in the second half was: bring her down. We managed to do so, but usually with more than one player at a time.
They also had a nifty winger, but let’s not concentrate too much on the losing side…
We scored a try in the first two / three / four minutes of the second half to really get our adrenaline going. Try scorers in the second half were Dibs, Fran and Emily. A memorable try was Emily’s crazy cheetah style run around their whole defensive line from one side to another. Our captain, Lorraine kicked quite a few conversions over to help us ahead.
We scored two tries in the last ten minutes, showing our reluctance to give up and we really kept our spirit going until the last second. It is often these vital last minutes in a match that make or break a team. Even though there were a lot of new players, the team work was excellent throughout the match and our ball work seems to be improving all the time.
The final score was 32 – 27. By the way, can we bring that dog Paddy to all the matches? He was the highlight!