Olney Rugby Club - Latest News
Vets v Richmond
(January 21, 2012)On Saturday 23rd the Occasionals entertained the Richmond Heavies at home. We always knew this would be a very hard fixture as Richmond are obviously a very strong club and their vets team renowned and currently undefeated. We had only ever played them once before and that was last season when the Occasionals travelled to the Athletic Ground with only 12 and a half players (I wasn’t there that day so not sure who or what the half player was!) and not unsurprisingly lost. Bearing this in mind we were determined to get a strong team out for the return match. However, we had such good support on the day that I think we could have put out 2 teams against them! It was certainly nice to see the likes of Bennett, Honky, Smudge all finally turn out for us along with the 2nd row Development pairing of Mark Lay and Buzzard.
We started off fairly well and managed to score under the posts in the first 15 minutes, but knew it wasn’t going to be easy as the Heavies contested every loose ball and pushed us around in the scrums. The half ebbed and flowed with some reasonable rugby but also some good cheating in the rucks and mauls. At half time we turned around 12-7 ahead.
I think it is fair to say that the fact we had to make so many changes to accommodate all our players didn’t help our cause – not because the changes weakened the side (quite the contrary) but more the fact we became quite disjointed as a team. In effect we had to start all over again in winning the one on one battles, whereas the Heavies were able to tweak a few things and come out stronger in the second half. We did manage to shore up the scrum a little with Ben Fennell coming on at prop (much to the moaning of the opposition who all knew him from his Rosslyn Park days), but we seemed to have lost the ability to play as a team and started to fall off tackles.
In the end the Heavies ran out winners by 28 points to 12 which was a little perhaps a little bit harsh on the home side but they did cap off the game with a marvellous cross field kick from a tap penalty to run in the final score under the posts.
It was a very good day for the club and the Heavies were a great bunch of guys who played the game in the right spirit. We sent them off after a few beers to go and call in on J9, where I believe they found their 3rd team partaking in the delights available. We are hoping to squeeze another fixture in against Richmond before the end of the season but we all agreed that the Occasionals vs Heavies match should be a regular home and away fixture form now on.
Our next game is Peterborough at Home on Saturday 4th Feb so it will be interesting to see if we get so many available to play again!
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