London Media 2s v Barnes Baba's - Friendly 55:17

…..and the clean shaven faces of the Outriders rather perplexed looked around the changing room; ‘where’s the warm up tops, the half cut socks & the isotonic drink’……”something’s not right” one whispered; ‘its like the Hunger Games”!

By Thursday late morning Kingston couldn’t field a side to play the Occies, who only had 4, whilst 8 Vets were waiting to hear who they were going to play! Yet after countless messages, calls and another WA channel being created, London Media were in search of a fixture at theirs, which we took with a team of 12 and sent a rallying call across the airwaves!
By Saturday morning a pristine representation of Outriders found themselves in the Pavilion at Battersea Park as well as a few players from other clubs and we were now at least 20!

Sadly though our jubilance in wearing kit even Ken had thrown out was not enough to help us beat a well drilled Media 2s who genuinely played some great rugby whilst capitalising on our naive errors.

Yet what we lacked in game management we made up for in spades by being one proper team of blokes (age 22 - 56), who wanted to play rugby and stay in the fight. The game epitomised everything a friendly had to offer, a ref, who claimed to be rusty made a brilliant job of letting the game flow and no more than a few scuffles dissipated into, ‘yeah my Dad would have yours any day!’ We played with real intent and scored 3 or 4 tries, put some good phases together and arguably had the upper hand in the scrum, (its called Tank), but out wide Media had fiery pace which we couldn’t match.

The score matters not.

A fixture that was badly needed left a bunch of lads very happy and some older men feeling still younger. Better still, absolute strangers made some great new friendships and with some hazy recollections included:

The awesome Cam Ruddock being Media’s man of the match (it’s all in the Gum Shield Cam!), Scotty introducing us to his Dad Scott, Dave BANG - proper nice bloke, Tank & Tankets beaming, Outriders - ALL of them, solid and special and above all Frosty…..MOD, we are in safe hands!

Huge thanks to Physio Polly for looking after us, cracking Media post-match hospitality and to all the players that showed us that rugby is alive and kicking, if we want it to be…….

Oh and reassuringly you will be pleased to know that Enable Leisure ‘facilities management’ are consistent; the pitch at Battersea just as good as ours at Barn Elms; bravo!

Horts & Co.....