More effective than custard?
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14th November 2009
Sawston Vs Shelford 3’s
After Englands lacklustre performance against Argentina on Saturday their backline were labelled, “about as effective as custard”. As they continued to fail to break teams down it made me think of comparisons with Sawston. Sure we’ve been more successful, with 5 wins and only one loss before this home game against Shelford, but our attacking play has definitely been in question. If points difference was the measure of league position then we’d currently be second from bottom. Whilst out-playing opposition up front, panic in the final third has restricted the number of points scored. Unfortunately with a makeshift back line, gale force winds and driving rain the answers to this problem were unlikely to come in this game. Still, an improvement was made with two well worked backs tries against a well organised Shelford defence more than deserving the draw if not a win.
The game didn’t start in Sawstons favour though and with the wind at their backs Shelford started confidently. Following a missed penalty they spent much of the half camped in Sawston territory. Then, after a sustained period of pressure and a series of scrums on the Sawston 5m they eventually made the breakthrough. Towards the end of the half Sawston did come back at them and at half time the team were still confident they could win.
Two quick tries in the second half from the magnificent Jay and Suka confirmed their belief as Sawston took hold of the game at 12-5. This is the point where we should have put the nail in the coffin and made inroads into the negative points difference. Unfortunately for Sawston, but with huge credit to Shelford, the away team came back even stronger. They upped their energy up front and released their smart backline for the equalising score.
After coming back into it Sawston had a number of tries disallowed from 5m scrums and then missed a penalty with a couple of minutes to go to win the game. 12-12 it stayed, with the best measure of who had the upper hand being Shelford turning down an attacking penalty to kick for touch and end the game as soon as possible.
Indicative of the archetypal local derby it was a pretty ferocious game with some big hits and confrontation – albeit mostly consisting of empty threats and handbags. There were a few punches flying around from both teams as tempers boiled over. Suka had 10 minutes rest for a left jab to the chest in retaliation to a wayward swing from a Shelford forward. He was a little unlucky to be fair as he was definitely not the only one.
My favourite piece of banter came from a particularly ugly opposition old timer when Dan Fordham squared up to him following an altercation at the bottom of a ruck. “You’re not big enough mate” was his reply as he went for the face-off only to come up at about nipple height. Presumably it was a phrase he learnt from his wife the last time he took his pants down.
Joking aside, as expected Shelford will definitely be a force to be reckoned with this season. In particular their fly half and outside centre had great games. The fly half kicked well and released the backline and the centre was certainly stronger than he looked. At one point Suka and I were both hanging on with our combined weight of 31 stone as he just carried on running!
On Sawstons team, Don has continued his good form, Pete is a rock at prop and James Dean and Josh held their wings superbly. The mobile back row of Tim, Dan, Robin and Mad Ben when he came on showed great promise. They’ve all got good hands and are quick to the breakdown which is going to be essential if we are to become, “more effective than custard” going forward and actually have a positive points difference.
Final Score 12-12
Team: Callum, Josh, Suka, Dan O, James Dean, Jay, Mark, Pete, Welf, Beast, Theo, Don, Dan F, Tim K, Robin.
Subs: Mad Ben for Robin
Tries: Jay, Suka
Cons: Jay
Sawston Star Man
It’s a real shame that I have no idea what goes on in the scrum because I am fairly certain that one of the forwards deserves the man of the match award. Generally speaking we seemed to have the upper hand against the experienced and “big boned” Shelford pack – which is certainly no mean feat. Dan and Theo also disrupted opposition lineout ball in extremely unfavourable conditions so maybe they deserve the award too. Unfortunately their only downfall is my ignorance of forward play. This being the case, Jay gets the award for scoring the first and setting up the second try.
Coaches Corner
Robin admitted to being sceptical about our chances of victory before the match but was pleased to say that by the end we deserved to win. “You always know Shelford are going to be a very strong side to play against and with a make shift back line it was never going to be easy. In fact in the end we deserved to win. Once we got the wind in the second half and scored two quick tries we unfortunately took our foot off the pedal and let Shelford back into the game.”
Players Perspective
5 weeks off with a knee injury meant that when a maul I was in collapsed in the opposition 22 after 70 minutes I was virtually incapable of getting up, let alone running 60m back into our own half to make a tackle. Heroically though I managed to drag my exhausted, fat body off the ground and started to jog in generally the right direction. Then rather embarrassingly Beastie, who had been on the pitch for the same length of time and was involved in the same maul, jogged past me telling me to “Hurry up Dan”. Maybe I need to work on my fitness a bit more?
The small print
This article does not represent the views of Sawston rugby and may not bear any resemblance to real events. It is not intended to offend anyone… actually that’s probably not true as I aim to offend everyone in the club at least once a season. I do not pretend to comprehend the rules, especially as the new rules are now the old rules and the old, old rules are back again. From time to time I will refer to “scrums” and “rucks” and “mauls” in these reports, but please be assured that I don’t know what these are.
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