5

Tries 1
Conversions 0
Penalties Awarded 0

31

Tries 5
Conversions 3
Penalties Awarded 0

We traveled with a squad of 23 into the heart of an autumnal Forest of Dean on a squally day which had lent us the rare privilege of an extra hour in bed with the clocks going back.

We won the toss and opted to play up hill in the first half. During the warm up, Drybrook who started with 15, had an injury meaning that Chong Lu kindly offered to play for the opposition for the first half.

Early in the first half Drybrook were awarded a scrum between their 10m and 22m line and we then won the ball against the head, having powerfully pushed them off their own ball to win a precious turnover. Intuitively, scrumhalf Harry Burridge passed blind to fly half Ryan McBane running a great line and who was presented with a 2 on 2. With a deft dummy, he slipped his marker for a half break creating a 2 on 1 and then passed to the flying Isaac Evans for his well deserved TRY. Sam Stevens converted from in front of the posts,
7-0.
There followed a period of too and fro which included a noticeable turnover from the ubiquitous and powerful Max Stanley-Jones and good support play from a much more confident looking Jack Cochrane who tackled and generally got ‘stuck in’ today. This ended when our captain, Alex Moore, was tackled off the ball and we won a penalty. Alex took a quick tap and spread the ball out wide moving slickly through several pairs of hands for Isaac Evans to score his second TRY with Sam Stevens making the difficult conversion,
14-0.
Towards the end of the first half we again went through several phases finding ourselves in the Drybrook 22. Some more slick passing meant the ball found the impressive Angus Walker running a clever line and he would have almost certainly scored a try but selflessly passed to the speedster Isaac Evans who galloped over for his well earned hat-trick TRY – his second of the season and a reflection of how we are playing as a team. A difficult conversion was missed, 19-0.

The half ended with a potentially nasty leg injury to the brave Charlie Langmaid who had only just come on and which was a disappointment to us all.We wish you a speedy recovery Charlie.

For the second half, we welcomed back the ever reliable Chong and loaned Drybrook our strongman Kai Sherrington who had played really well for us but went on to play even better, as acknowledged by their coaches, for a depleted Drybrook team. Through injury, Sam Woodward, who had been playing an impressive technical game for us at hooker (line out and scrum) also went over to Drybrook to keep the game competitive.

There were several standout moments for us in the wet and blustery second half. First winger, Daniel Coolican Davies, who had been playing really well, went off as a precaution following a head injury. Also, Barney Health-Smith, who might have kicked for touch, opted to run from deep within his 22. With a combination of pace and guile he worked his way into the opposition half and put in a clever grubber only to then pull a hamstring causing him to leave the field through injury. From this position, we kept up the pressure and some lovely hands from Josh Hansen, coming back from injury, meant that Charlie Houlston found himself in space. Earlier on in his career he might have passed, but sensing a stretched defense he threw a cheeky dummy and went over for a well deserved TRY which was not converted. We also noticed a really skillful pick up of a wet ball from the boot laces in the first half
24-0.
About three quarters of the way through the second half, Drybrook put together a concerted string of attacks and despite some heroic individual and team tackling from Old Pats, they went on to score a well deserved try in the corner which they failed to convert.
24-5
Powerful centre Alex Moore scored our final TRY when he ran a ‘scythe like’ line through the heart of the tired Drybrook defense after multiple phases of attack from our boys. Sam converted.
31-5
Disappointingly the game then descended and ended with a bit of ‘argy-bargy’, I think mainly because we were dominant and frustrated their play throughout. Importantly we kept our heads when others might not have – an important life skill for any good team. Well done boys, that is five from five.

Today was a great team performance and showed what we can achieve when combining our individual skill with a team ethos – every single player contributed to our win.

Training on Wednesday at Old Pats from 6 to 7 and our next game is at home on Sunday against Bredon.

Hein le Roux