A free lunch at the Saints prevented my match attendance at Old Coventrians but by the magic of technology, I was able to assimilate enough information to produce the semblance of a match report, this week. Eventually.

Olney kicked off playing left to right and OCs made a miserable kick return to Max Day, who immediately proceeded to run up his own arse and was caught just outside the 22m. Fortunately for Olney he made the ball readily available and it was soon spun out to Henry Warren who ran in a superb individual try from his own 10m line. Charlie Hicks converting. OCs immediately responded to some pretty lazy defence (watch the Veo) with their right winger outstripping Olney to score under the posts. The next score fell to Olney after good work in building a platform for (what looked like) Mac Kitchener to rumble over under the posts, Charlie H converting again.

A few minutes later, Olney conceded a penalty from their own scrum and OC’s full-back then kicked the 3 points from the 10m line with the ball still rising as it went over the posts (alarm bells, anyone?). A while passed and after Harvey Dench’s superb running line and an Olney attacker being “held-up” on the tryline, Max Day scored a wonderful try under the posts. Then, after a dodgy offside decision, Olney conceded another try and conversion. Another short while later, ineffectual tackling in midfield led to another breakout try to the home side much to the glee of the home support, and Olney go behind for the first time in the game. A short-lived lead, however, after (what looks like) Arthur Betteridge falling over the line just before half-time.

From the second-half kick-off, following more lacksadaisical defence (poor tackling and too much walking), OCs scored on the left, but this time wide out and unconverted. There then followed a period of rather sterile play which included Olney failing to score on the left with no assistance from the OC touchjudge (quite the opposite). However, after the best attacking build-up of the game, Max Day was able to score following good running from captain Ewan Fuller, which Charlie unfortunately put the conversion wide of the posts. 5 minutes later OCs came back following another scrum penalty to score a converted try near the posts… 36-33. Later Max Day scores his hat trick try far out on the right which Charlie could not convert…36-38. “Take the points!” someone shouted from the crowd a bit later when OCs were caught offside in front of the posts (the referee had been gleefully awarding penalties all day for this offence which he clearly thought was his specialist USP as an official)…but no, it’s a “quick one” again which was easily snuffed out by OC’s prop simply falling over.

For the next 10 minutes Olney attacked pretty well with some joined up thinking from Max Day at full-back kicking for position astutely. However, OCs were able to break into Olney’s half towards the end of the game and after some crap tackling scored wide out on the right…41-38.
This is how the scored remained for the rest of the game, despite some good attacking moves from both sides.

Apologies for another absentee match report but if no one else wants to write one, it’s all you’re going to get. [Ed - speak to one of the normal reprobates if you would like to write a match report...and not just mention it at the AGM]

Yet again, Olney score a shedload of points but concede even more. Next week, it’s the Past Player Reunion lunch with Old Scouts at home. We know how good they will be so and so do they, so let’s not hang around to see how good they are. N.B., they lost to this lot too, so it’s do-able.