Men’s 1st XV v London Cornish 22/11/2008

Away – RFU Senior Vase

Report by Andy Ward

Lost 25-28

I’m tempted to say just read the match facts and that tells its own story, but that would be a cop out and there would be nothing to delight the reader this week. So, in the true spirit of the “show must go on” I will try my best to make a silk purse out of this particular sow’s ear.

The day started with a fine sausage, bacon and egg bap with lashings of brown sauce, accompanied by a coffee down at HQ as I waited for Martin to finish his duties before we could set off. Richard – our third official arrived and soon we were on our way heading up to the frozen north (London) to join our hosts for a lunch.

Now, possibly unique amongst Clubs in the UK – well certainly all that I have visited, LC do not have a ground but they use a pub (and a fine one at that) called the Telegraph Inn and play on a pitch 2 or 3 miles away which is part of Wimbledon Common and is also the Harlequins training ground.

So, we arrived at the TI and had a decent lunch and then set off for the LC ground, ready for the appointed KO of 13:45. LC kicked off the game and within two minutes Hove had conceded a penalty that proved beyond the LC kicker. Hove were then awarded a penalty when Liam Hale was tackled in the air and a long kick to touch set up a Hove attack.

After 9 minutes of both teams having attacks but these breaking down – often because of rather idiosyncratic interpretations of the laws by the referee it has to be said – Adam Phillips was on one of his many forays up the pitch and dropped the first recorded Hove goal of the season. So, well done to Adam for removing the 0 under the DG For column on the statistics!

Three minutes later Adam was again rampaging forward and this time made a break that saw him go over for a try. The kick was missed and so the score was 8-0 to the Maroon and Blue (and White and no doubt a splash of pink somewhere!).

LC bounced back and scored a try of their own which was converted and so the Hove lead was cut to the slenderest of margins at 8-7. After 30 minutes of play a ruck was formed just outside the LC 22 and the ball came blind to winger Scott Patto who took the defender on and went over in the corner for a try – which again was not converted.

Half time came and the score remained at 13-7 and the team were looking good value for the lead. Adam Phillips restarted the game at the behest of the referee and within 2 minutes the ball came out to the left and Paddy went over for a good score. Sadly, the two points were declined again by Hove and the score crept up to 18-7.

After 61 minutes, Coach MacTaggart decided to change the personnel and on came burly centre Tom Howell for Gerwyn Wilson. This paid immediate dividends as 2 minutes later, Tom powered over for a try near the posts and Sam scored the extra two points to make it Hove 25, LC 7 with around 20 minutes left to play.

At this point, all the Hove contingent of followers were agreed that this was enough to win the game. Sadly, a mad 10 minutes was about to come and that view was not upheld. After 65 minutes, Robin Ward came on for Charlie Brock only for Rory to indicate a couple of minutes later that he couldn’t continue – thus forcing Martin to put Sam on as well. So, most of the front row had changed in the space of two minutes which perhaps wasn’t what the coach had intended and possibly Rory should have indicated earlier.

Eight minutes later, LC broke on Hove’s right and sailed through a totally awful attempt at a tackle by the defender which just opened the gate and Cornish scored a converted try from this. Four minutes later, another mistake, this time at the line gave Cornish the ball and the Hove defenders just watched as LC ran some 20 metres through nearly all the backs to score their third converted try of the game.

The score was now 25 to Hove and 21 to Cornish. Please, PLEASE hold on for just another seven minutes. Sadly, this was not to be and a mere 5 minutes later after another bad line out by Hove, LC had the ball the south side of where the line was. This time, the LC ran between all the forwards as well as all the backs and scored a final converted try under the posts to take it to 28-25. Unbelievable.

Clearly, Hove were acting as Father Christmas and giving an early present to the hosts!

So, analysis time: where did it all go wrong? Well, I’m not going to name names as I see little purpose. Everyone knows what they did and what their part in this defeat was. So, lets look at the bare facts. LC 4 tries – Hove 4 tries. LC 4 conversions – Hove 1 conversion. And Hove had the drop goal. We must improve our kicking return. We had a penalty at the end of the first half that we elected to run. I say “elected” but that is somewhat wrong as before the Captain could make a decision, someone else had taken it upon themselves to tap and go. Now, had that resulted in a try then everyone would be applauding and saying well done. But it didn’t. It resulted in the ref making another extraordinary decision and the ball went to LC and up the field.

Now three points would not have won the game – but it would have given us extra time. Whether we could have used it or not we will never know. But the fact is that we are not killing games off when we should be. Cornish were dead and buried and we let them back in with atrocious tackling, if we can call some of those efforts a tackle.

Yes, we gave the ball away at the line but why didn’t we tackle them? Yes, it was one on one on the Cornish left but why didn’t we tackle them? The kicking – well it was a swirling wind and all our tries apart from Tom’s were at the corner flag and these aren’t easy to kick. We can’t always sail around the in goal area to get it under the posts but surely we can try?

Next week sees us at Purley John Fisher in another tricky away fixture. Let’s hope that we have a team that will tackle and will grind out a victory. The games are 80 minutes long and we must compete for ALL of those 80 minutes. Taking the foot off the gas is not the way to overturn teams who were clearly not as good as us for 70 of those 80 minutes.

Some players were clearly upset at the end of the game – why weren’t you all? Man of the Match – Jack Baker. Why? Because he tackles!