Last weekend it was almost a perfect ten result wise, with all teams winning, bar the heartache of the Men’s 1st XV, who lost another epic encounter against arch-rivals Dorking 29-31 at Barn Elms. Losing to Dorking in the league is a habit we need to break this season, and I am sure we will when the away leg comes about.

Onto happier news! The Originals kicked off the weekend with a narrow win away at Chiswick RFC 24-31 on Friday night, and this was followed a resounding 55-10 for Barnes Raiders (our 2nd XV).

On Sunday, it was all about our girls and women, our Under 12’s girls winning all four of their games in a competition at Cobham, and then both our Women’s XV’s notched up excellent wins, the 1st XV overcoming Medway 14-8, their first win in the championship, whilst the 2nd XV won 5-10 away at Old Ruts.

There is a lot for you to read this week, with reports below from nearly all of the games played by Barnes RFC last week, so do take your time and enjoy!

We have already seen a hat full of injuries this season, too many for my liking, and indeed last weekend only increased that tally, the Women’s 2nd XV game was stopped early due to an injury to Angie, and the Polish Express Marek had a nasty injury which kept him in hospital overnight. We all wish them a speedy recovery.

There are only two men’s games this weekend, our 1st XV travel to play North Walsham, and will be looking to get back to winning ways, whilst the Raiders travel to Chinnor, good luck to both teams, may you play in the original spirit that we so love at Barnes RFC!

Onwards and Upwards Barnow!

Michael Whitfield – President Bar[b]nes RFC

Barnes Under 12’s Girls shine on a beautiful Sunday morning - words by Boris Pomroy
A beautiful sunny Sunday morning in Cobham set the scene for our first set of matches in the newly reformed junior girl’s section.

I’d like to say the nerves were jangling, but actually it was simple the noise of sweets being unwrapped as the girls physically and mentally prepared themselves for battle.

Our first match, against a travelling Haywards Heath team was… average. A few missed tackles, some atrocious tackling and a general lack of realisation they were actually playing a match saw us down 1-0 with about 3mins to play. However, the never say die attitude we’ve come to expect from this group saw them pull back and then overtake to win 2-1 with the final play of the game.

Match two was against a plucky Old Reigatians team, who had performed well in their opening match. We ditched the normal pre-match words of wisdom from the coaches, telling the girls ‘They had to work out what went wrong and fix it’. Fourteen minutes and ten tries later, it’s fair to say they had. Final score 10-1.

A long break, and a biltong re-energiser, had them chomping at the bit for their penultimate game against a combination side of Richmond and Battersea Ironsides, coached by a Mr Steve Cockle (formerly of this parish). It’s fair to say the Battersea girls also played like Steve, giving our girls the most physical test to date.

After an edgy first half, they discovered that width in attack, combined with courage in defence was the winning combination - eventually running out 5-2 winners. Final game was against, a Cobham combination team who proved too tired for our girls, with us finishing the day with a 7-0 win.

There’ll be tougher days ahead for this emerging group, but the character, quality and pure sense of joy that comes from these girls, suggests there’s much more to come.
Next festival - 8th October, Old Guildfordians!

Barnes Men’s 1st XV 29 - 31 Dorking Men’s 1st XV - words by Frank Macarthur (Frank the Tank)
A three-try onslaught in the opening 11 minutes cost Barnes this clash, with Dorking emerging the winners of a well-fought contest: 31 - 29.

Barnes head coach Jack Heald said: “We can’t expect to win any game if we have an opening period as bad as that first few minutes. Dorking took their chances well.”

Dorking were rampant from the first whistle, especially in the pack, as uncharacteristically poor tackling from Barnes and some strong running from the visitors resulted in an opening try from blindside flanker Will Scholes as he ran in after just two minutes.

Quick succession scores from Dorking soon followed, with winger Toby McRae getting in almost unopposed, and then hooker Jonathan Ellis crashing over after a strong driving lineout and some gritty forward play.

With barely 15 minutes played it soon looked like Barnes were about to bear the brunt of an unstoppable Dorking onslaught.

But fears of a capitulation were hugely unfounded, and great work in defence, and attack, ultimately led to Barnes vice-captain Ryan Nixon breaking off a strong driving maul to score.

Two tries in the following five minutes meant the scoreboard began to look a little more favourable as the hosts surged back into the game - with exciting winger Cam Roberts dotting down under the sticks after nipping in at the corner.

As our attacking pressure built up, the club’s irrepressible skipper Josh Davies scampered over the whitewash to make it 19-24 to Dorking at the break.

In the opening exchanges of the second half, it took a yellow card for Dorking fly-half Craig Holland to galvanise the home team, with another well-worked try, scored this time by winger Chris Stegman.

Barnes outside-half Harry Mercer slotted a penalty to keep the scoreboard moving in the Londoner’s favour. But a storming attack, against the run of play, resulted in a try from Dorking inside centre Henry Anscombe - who also added the extras - putting the visitors ahead.

And that’s where they stayed. Some outstanding play and defensive work from Barnes in the dying moments gave the home crowd some hope but a wayward pass, and some clever defending, saw Dorking snuff out any hopes of a fairy-tale fightback.

The final score 29-31 to Dorking, who remain our bogey side!

Dorking boss Armand Roux said: “This was a great game by both teams. A well fought match played in the right spirit and we’re really happy with 5 points on the road!”

And Barnes skipper Josh Davies said: “Fair play to Dorking who played well but we are really frustrated with today’s result. We move om, we move on!”

And indeed, we do move on this weekend as we travel to our old friends in Norfolk, North Walsham, a lovely bunch of people off the pitch, with the ever-present potential of a banana skin of you are not careful!

Barnes Women’s 1st XV 14-8 Medway Women’s 1st XV - words by skipper Ruth Mottershead

This Sunday our Women’s 1st team played their second game in Championship 2 against Medway Ladies, at home.

Fired up from our exciting clash against Hammers last weekend, we were hoping for our first win of the season. Vibes were good in the changing rooms, and some pre-game dancing, and the traditional rendition of ‘Complicated’ got us fired up and onto the pitch.

The first 10 minutes of play felt very close, but an early penalty to Medway put them 3-0 up. Our confidence was growing and after that early mistake we spent the rest of the first half in Medway’s side of the pitch. Strong runs from the forwards saw us powering through the defence, and it felt inevitable that we would score soon.

Our scrum felt unstoppable, and we repeatedly ran over the Medway pack. Eventually fast hands through the backs off a scrum sent Caroline up the wing. She handed off a few opposition players to get our first score, converted by Ruth. 7-3 Barnes.

We went into the second half determined to widen the gap, but some strong runs by Medway saw us defending on our try line. We held them out for a while but eventually they burst through. 8-7 to Medway.

Determined to pull the game back, we managed to turn the ball over almost immediately off kick off. We kept the pressure on, winning several penalties, and eventually Amanda crashed through several defenders to score under the posts. Another conversion for Ruth put us 14-8 up.

The rest of the game was spent on Medway’s line, looking like we were doing everything not to score.

We still have lots to work on in the red zone, but by keeping the pressure on we kept them away from the ball and did enough to take the win.

Shout outs this week go to a new 9/10 combo in Naomi and Taz, who managed the game incredibly well, and looked like they had been playing together there for years, and to Charlotte Bigland running out at 13, and doing a fantastic job.

Back of the match was Caroline, who got her first 1st team try, and impressed everyone with her physical play.

Players player was a newcomer to Barnes, Kitty, who has shown herself as a solid starting 1st team player and had a brilliant game.

Forwards of the match went to the rest of the front row, Annie and vice-captain Morv. Our scrum dominance played a huge part in our win and they both had excellent games.

We now have a week off and look forward to playing Hove on 8th October.

Barnes Raiders (2nd XV) 55 - 10 Dorking 2nd XV (words by George Cooke)

In Round 4 of the Raging Bull Merit League One, the Raiders tussled with a fiery Dorking side.

Short of front-rowers (and other forwards, too) again, David Adejuwon strapped on his boots for a second valiant 80 in as many weeks. He was joined by Richard Paddick and Spencer Hayhow in a particularly dominant front row - Raiders marched Dorking back at scrum and maul time to really dominate field position. This created a great platform for the backs to score 9 tries between them. Spencer was dynamic around the park on both sides of the ball, too - a standout performer on the day.

The remainder of the 2s pack were attritional, too, Rory Kassapian proving particularly damaging in attack, and Michael Batty presiding over a successful line-out and maul.

Jonny Searle was dynamic at 9, and Kyle Beattie controlled field position well from 10, his left boot firing several remarkable kicks to the corner and ever reliable from the tee.

It was a day for the back-three, though (there were 7 of them in total in our squad), with tries for Charlie Scott, Paul Webb, Conan Osborne (who also managed to slot a drop conversion), Jacques Birch and Frank Nickson. Pace and power in attack was the theme of the day - Raiders’ strong runners were simply too much for the Dorking defence.

Raiders scored three early tries, and didn’t let up, eventually winning 55-10. Much improvement can still be made, but this result is testament to the Senior Squad’s depth. The Raiders are yet to play in a tight contest - we know we can score tries, and we look forward to testing our mettle under pressure.'

Old Ruts 10-5 Barnes Women’s 2nd XV - words by skipper Rosie Price
Barnes Women’s 2nd XV visited Old Ruts (formally Mitcham & Carshalton) for an away game last Sunday with a side that mostly hadn’t played together before - or had never played before, with an excellent debut from Edy.
Possession and territory were fairly evenly shared for the first half, with both teams making breaks but not able to close out the last few meters.
Windy conditions meant that line outs were troublesome, however we dominated these, stealing a good number of them off Ruts. Handling errors resulted in a lot of scrums from the off, with Barnes having the lion’s share of the put ins.

Some well-practiced technique from the forwards won us a few penalties as we capitalised on Rut’s desperation to turn over the scrums and this set us up for some solid attacks by our backs. There were some exciting breaks down both wings as we battled back and forth, but frustratingly we headed in at half time with a 0-0 scoreline!

The 2nd half saw our fullback and half backs work closely together right from the start, with a well-earned try in the first few minutes to open the scoring.

A difficult angle, and blustery conditions, hampered the goal kick but we established a 0-5 lead.

Ruts hit back soon afterwards, levelling up the scores at 5-a-piece, but then our forwards resumed demolishing Ruts at the set piece, until some impressive territorial kicking and another superb bit of support play and offloading between the backs led to our second try, putting Barnes into the lead 5 - 10.

Determined to even things up again, Ruts hammered the line, but our defence held resolute and there was definitely a sense that momentum was on our side.

Unfortunately, the game finished early due to an injury to our scrum half, and we wish Angie a speedy recovery. We are all immensely proud of the team for their performance. The skills and enthusiasm showed by each, and every player bodes well for the season ahead and is testament to the effort that everyone has put into training in the preseason.

Forward of the match went to Meli for her incredible crash balls and always being there to provide support to her team.

Back of the match was Laura for her impressive efforts getting us out of the danger zone and scoring a fantastic try!

Our next game will be on the 15th October at home, as we play a rescheduled fixture against Belsize Park Women. Please do come along and show your support for your Barnes Women’s 2nd XV.