Greetings from Bermuda at the height of the hurricane season. It’s true…if you Google “when is the maddest time to book a holiday here”, the response is a unanimous, ”Don’t be a total sausage and try and go in September!” Needless to say, I did not pass this information to the wife, so she was oblivious to the extreme likelihood of being taken out by a speedboat in Hamilton High Street. Of course, folk that know me well will know that a three grand saving on accommodation I would not sniff at, so all I had to pay for was the flights, motorcycle hire, beers and tasty snacks. NB. So far, we’ve had 4 days of 29degC, sunny with a light breeze. Climate change?

Anyway, back to the land of Englebert Humperdinck and the rugger…Olney kicked off and Harboro’ allowed the ball to wander into touch for a lineout. They won that and decided to kick ahead for their left winger to chase. Struan however got there first and set up a nice little platform which lasted a couple of phases until the ball went down. Apparently, in this new world of forward passing being perfectly acceptable, dropping the ball backwards is still a knock-on. Clearly a decision based on an unsighted guess.

[I think it’s worth mentioning at this stage that despite my knowing the full-time score before I watched the match on Veo, Olney did not look a bad side at all…certainly not a 50-losing-point side and Harboro’ weren’t as slick as the final score suggested either].

Anyway, this gave them an opportunity to exploit any possible weaknesses in Olney’s scrum…which the did. From there sprang another lineout, another scrum and a rolling maul that even man-mountain Hector could not stop. From a resultant in-from-the-side penalty, they played Big-man-outside and eventually ran through a hole in the defence to score near the posts. Olney kicked back to the home side and again, they looked OK, setting up a couple of nice little attacking phases, until the referee gave a penalty to Harboro for not allowing a player to release the ball. Harboro’ were then allowed to march up the pitch, set piece by set piece, until they were able to score a penalty…which I think they saw as a good result. Olney replied immediately with a well taken penalty by Max Day and still looked well in the game, with the home side making as many errors as Olney. In fact up to this point, Olney had made more dents in the opposition’s defence than they had. However, it was in the set piece where Harboro’ were beginning to show their superiority and, there’s no easy way of saying this, especially in the scrum. Another dominant scrum allowed their No. 8 to crash over for another converted try. A short while later, after a few more scrum penalties, another Olney scrum was overturned for another converted try. Olney went on the attack again before half-time but their 10 noticed we were a winger and a 15 lacking on the right-hand side and managed to catch Hector on his own in his 22. From the resultant line-out they scored another converted try, this time from first phase. Half-time score 31 – 3.

Harboro’ kicked off and were soon winning penalties again which they chose to scrum. Another try for the No. 8 followed fairly quickly…score now 38-3. Then from a failed kick ahead from their 10, Struan gathered and whipped it out to Max Day who set up a superb counter-attack running 50m to eventually win Olney a lineout from which we spun it wide for Struan scoot over in the corner. 38 – 8. There then followed three more home tries, only one scored from open play and only one not converted. For the final 10-15 minutes, Harboro’ stopped scoring because the forwards decided enough was enough and stopped pushing and jumping basically. Final score 57-8.

Olney 1st XV are not a bad side and of course we know that Olney is an even better club but being unable to win your own set piece play coupled with an opposition kicker who rarely misses is a bit of a problem. If you cannot overcome the opposition even from your forced errors, you’re not going to score points. The good news is that Kettering are now lying second in the league and we beat them last week, so all is far from lost at this very early stage. But conceding 124 points in three games is a bad thing that must be put right.