Jones - big impact!

Quote of the day:

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The Black Baa Baas faced London Media RFC in our 13th game of the season, desperate to extend our unbeaten run. With no shortage of players available, especially up front, surely it would a case of played 13, won 13…or would it? This was one of our least impressive performances of the season so far, and with a couple of very "flat" try-scoring passes called forward by the referee, and an unusually high number of handling errors by the Blacks, it was nearly a case of 13th time unlucky. Of course by the time the beers had started to flow after the game, there was a lot of old tripe talked about how winning while playing badly is the sign of a good team (oh dear!) But before all of that, there was a game to play…

The Blacks started energetically enough, but struggled to get establish any sort of pattern on, or control over, the game. The lack of continuity was in no small part exacerbated by the performance of the referee, whose keen eye for invisible offences scarcely ingratiated him to either side. Bit by bit some dominance was established, with Ant Cavallini making his usual outstanding contribution and Ashley Jones making a welcome impact when he came on. The score had remained locked at 0-0 for some time before a brilliant individual try from full-back Damien Maltwood saw the Blacks finally move into the lead. However the game stayed close throughout and even with the Blacks' second try, scored by Simon Dunstan, we couldn't quite pull away as the home side matched us try for try. With only two points separating the teams, and the Blacks' inability to turn late possession into points, it made for a tense finish.

When the referee awarded London Media a penalty in a very kickable position only 2 or 3 minutes from the end of the game, it looked like our run of victories would be cruelly interupted. Much to our relief, the opposition's kicker wasn't quite London Media RFC's answer to John Eales, even if he was a 2nd row forward, and the kick drifted wide. Even considering we had played poorly by this season's standards, losing the game by a point at that stage of the match would have been very harsh indeed. Instead we were thankful that "Jonah" Samuel had kicked the conversions, and that we still had our unbeaten run to protect.

Ben RomerLee

Team List:

Abrahams, Jones, Daley, P Abbott, Crawford, B Romer-Lee, Bachellerie, Entwhistle, Slee, Cavallini, Homan, Aird, Dunstan, Smith, Crichton, Samuel, Melville, Maltwood.