Sawston Rugby Club

A bit like Cliff’s classic hit I was starting to wonder if this season would ever end. 7th in the Greene King Super Premier Merit table and runners up in the Cambridgeshire County Junior Cup Final is probably not as much as we had hoped for at the start of the season but given where we were at Christmas – not too bad at all. My beloved Hull City would be proud of our 8 losses in a row, low morale, on-pitch bollockings at half time and almost non-existent training sessions. We were looking like relegation candidates and definitely nowhere near a cup final. Thankfully training attendance picked up, Cambridge 3’s folded and watching Wales slump to 4th in the Six Nations gave people the bug again. In contrast to the Tigers we dragged ourselves up the league and even won a couple of cup-ties. In the shock result of the year we even beat the Spanish lads and found ourselves in a cup final against newly formed Mildenhall. Unfortunately the dream end to a difficult year wasn’t to be and our Suffolk friends took the Cambridgeshire crown in a hard fought match at the Village College on Saturday.

Congratulations to Mildenhall, they played a strong game and brought a fine compliment of fans for a small town in the middle of nowhere. In fact if we’d realised that all of Mildenhall and the surrounding area were going down to Sawston on Saturday afternoon we could have sent the 2nd team up the A11 to do a bit of looting. Admittedly the Mildenhall military connection would be a bit of worry, you wouldn’t want a paratrooper abseiling through your letterbox to reclaim his plasma TV. If he’s an American soldier he’d probably napalm the entire street on his way out too – and “accidentally” kill any nearby British soldiers in the cross-fire.

It wasn’t just the crowd either, the Mildenhall team played with great spirit, organisation and no shortage of talent (6,12 and 15 especially). Good luck to them for next year, this is a great achievement for a club in only their third season. That said, I hope we get a chance to get our own back next year.

Sawston, well we tried hard didn’t we? The season ended in the much the same vein as it started with some excellent spells of rugby and some NOT so excellent spells but with no shortage of effort. It was a day that was bound to go wrong from the start as Martin turned up thinking he’d packed his lucky cycling shorts for the game only to realise that he’d brought a knotted up selection of his girlfriends black satin underwear by “accident”. I was a bit surprised when he decided to wear it anyway but I was quickly reminded that the most Scottish males are cross-dressing drunks and at least Martin was sober. Admittedly for a man wearing women’s underwear he added an unnatural amount of much needed “dog” to our defence and even made an impressive break and off-load. Both of which we’d sorely missed before he came on. Surely if we are to improve next year we need to hang on to new players like this.

If the lack of Martins lucky shorts wasn’t a bad enough omen other players were dealing with jittery nerves. Most of the players looked like MP’s waiting for the Telegraph to publish details of the expense claim they’d made for the “essential” diamond encrusted vibrator for their second home. Wilf was shaking like a shitting dog (or maybe it was just a dog having a shit, it’s difficult to tell at a distance) and even Alan admitted to being “nervous for the first time since I’d heard Libby was leaving Neighbours”.

Quote of the day though goes to Chris who after the game grew increasingly frustrated with the referee for chatting away whilst holding onto the bottle of Lanson. “With respect sir, will you shut the f*ck up and drink the f*cking champagne”. It just shows that as long as you say, “With respect sir” first you can get away with pretty much anything.

A final thought for the summer ahead comes from Gareth Chilcott who described his Saturday afternoons in the off-season as, “A quiet pint followed by 15 noisy ones”. Enjoy the time off lads and lets come back stronger next year and hopefully not too much fatter... also if you’ve enjoyed this match report and indeed any other that I’ve written this year please feel to buy me a beer at the Annual dinner on Saturday. See you there!

Final Score 13 - 33

Team: Dan O, Callum, Chris S, Robin, Ashley, Jay, Nick F, Joe, Wilf, Nab, Don, Theo, Dan F, Vipers, Pete.

Subs: Martin, Woody, Alan, Wayne

Tries: Callum (2)
Pens: Dan O

Sawston Star Man: I’m not sure if it is because he lures them into a false sense of security by being small and ginger but Nick doesn’t seem to have too much of a problem tackling any of the big forwards that run at him. He just sort of goes at them like a slightly overweight, balding, ginger spider monkey and then hauls them on top of himself. Whatever he does he was unanimously voted as the Sawston Man of the Match so well done Nick. At the other end of the height spectrum Dan Fordham also showed great endeavour and high work rate whilst taking some pretty severe, as seen on the internet, hand-offs and dump tackles. Pete has now put in so many “solid as a rock” performances that I believe he has now started to look like one and Callum capped off an excellent but lazy season with two “Gary Lineker” tries. Imagine how many he’d score if he actually made an effort?

Vipers Award for Idiocy: I was having a shower after training on Thursday when I started to worry about getting some good material for the final match report of the season. I was especially worried about the Vipers Award because it was between Ashley and Vipers himself as to who would take the Overall Idiot of the Year award. They both went into the final round with 3 Vipers awards each so I was a little worried that they would be trying too hard not to do something stupid and I wouldn’t have any funny material. At the very moment that I was pondering this problem Vipers walked into the showers and it was then that I noticed that he had forgotten to take off his socks. “Oh shit, I have forgotten to take my socks off again.” he said. “Again?” I replied “So you’ve done this before?”. “All the time” was his response and suddenly a great weight was lifted off my shoulders. Congratulations Vipers, you truly are an idiot.

The small print

This article does not represent the views of Sawston rugby club and may not bear any resemblance to real events. In fact it is unlikely to bear any resemblance to real events. This article is not intended to offend anyone (especially referees) so please treat it with the humour with which it was intended. The author does not pretend to comprehend the rules and is unlikely to account much for forward play as he does not understand it.

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