Wimbledon U18s V Weybridge Vandals U18s 8/11/09

This Sunday WM&YRFC U18s season got properly underway as they took on Weybridge Vandals in their first league game, and with a little help from the u17s in the squad we made a pretty good start.

Team
1. Tatenda /Liam
2. Phillip
3. James*
4. Ben
5. Francis
6. Ed/Andrew*
7. Tim* (Man of the Match)
8. Nathan
9. Theo
10. Mathew
11. Greg
12. Tom
13. Chris
14. Bobby/ Tatenda
15. John

We kicked off and WV forward neatly collected the ball only to find a charging Nath and T make him instantly regret the decision as the drove him back towards his own posts. He managed to get the ball away though but the subsequent clearance kick was charged down by Tim sending WV into scrambled defence and ending up with a 5m scrum to us.. We won the scrum Nath picked up cut through their back row and popped to ball to the first support player and 5 passes later Chris P making his debut at Centre took the ball at speed and went over for the try. 0-5
Mathew resplendent in his new leg wear made a good attempt at the conversion but denied his usual kicking cone didn’t quite clear the bar.
WV tried to get over the shock of this early score and followed up their own kick off to see if they could repeat our style. Their pressure led to a fumble then an offside gave them a penalty but they missed and we kept the 5-point lead. We then battled hard for a few minutes with T making his mark several times, a good scrum quickly won and the ball sped down the line, John came in from full back and ran from our 22 to theirs, a hopeful pass as he was finally dragged down was neatly collected by Tim, although we had several support runners there, and Tim was over for our 2nd try. 0-10.
Martin found a cone to Mathews liking and this time he took the 2 points. 0-12
The resulting kick off was carried back to them by Tim with T in support, a frantic couple of minutes ended in a penalty against us. The subsequent kick to touch was kept in play by a leaping Theo and James took it on the charge and we moved back into their 5-metre zone. Ben fished the ball out of a maul and made for the line, for a while he carried 3 defenders on his back before eventually going down short of the line. He laid it back though and we attacked again, the ball travelling down the line nicely, a chip over their defence from Chris nearly paid off but it turned out to be a little to far.
We were soon attacking again though with the forwards taking turns to bash their way up the field, first Francis, then James then Ben, then Ed with Phil and others piling in behind them. Eventually the ball was sent down the line with the last but one wave of forwards making the back line swell. Jim took it on and popped a neat pass to T who crashed through for a try in the corner. 0-17
Mathew stepped again leg wear and cone working in unison and a difficult kick sailed between the posts. 0-19
WV came back from the kick off desperate to get a score before half time, our pressured defence forced them to try kicking over our defence line of charging forwards and this time Bobby, playing out of position on the wing saw the ball booming his way with the WV attack close behind it. Bobby took the catch steadied himself and let loose John who made another long run but was hauled down before he made the line or could get the ball to Jim haring up in support. We kept them pinned down until half time and the satisfaction of a hard fought 30 minutes.

Half time and we brought our precious reserves into play, all 2 of them. Ed went off to earn a crust at his job and Andy was given a chance at flanker. Bobby had defended his wing well but we wanted to treat WV to the tender treatment of Liam in the front row so we rested Bobby and let T try out on the wing, yep that’s right not content with making a flanker patrol the wing we thought we see what prop could do.
We tried him out fairly quickly, Nath picked up form the scrum bashed through one and as he was held by another gave it to T “speeding” down the wing. The timing wasn’t quite right though but it scared his opposite number and so it should.
The ball went back and forth for a while, eventually Greg tried to open it up with a neat kick ahead, chasing and getting it back (the Boyd recruitment agency strikes again) T was given another run down his wing but needed a bit more space than he was allowed.
We pinned them down for a while after this, Andy looking good in the back row charged down a clearance kick by getting away from the scrum really quickly. He and James also worked hard to spoil their line out ball and generally harried them whenever they could. Several more attacks didn’t end in a score but kept WV under pressure, we took a scrum against the head, always a pleasure to see and got the ball moving well. The game plan seemed to have changed though and we began to lose our shape for periods of the game. A good run by the forwards saw Liam almost on the score board but the ball slipped from his grasp and was turned over. Someone had to pay for that though and his next tackle was boneshaker. Somehow, suddenly we seemed to be in all sorts of a mess and WV turned the tables and pushed on from breakdown to breakdown before eventually scrambling over for a try and conversion 7-19
There was definitely a danger of us letting WV back into the game and we needed to reassert our authority quickly. Pressure from the kick off (again, well done) ended up in us being awarded a penalty just over their 10m line. Go for the corner advised the coaches but what do we know, a quick chat between Nath and Matt and the refs pointing at the posts, out comes the cone and 3 more points are ours and more importantly the score difference means they need to cross our line and convert twice to draw level or put another way, they are not back in the game. 7-21
WV tried to prove me wrong and fought hard, several times Nath wrestled the ball from their forwards, Andy disrupted any break aways, Theo hassled their no 9 and Liam hauled down their big men. We could of and perhaps should have scored a couple more, our first tries came form unselfish handling moves, our near misses came when we took it on when we should have shipped it out. We were working hard though as were WV who seemed determined to finish with a score, a couple of penalties helped them nearer to their goal and in the last play of the game they swept the ball out to the wing and set off at pace until Chris bundled the wing into touch and heard the final whistle as his reward.
A good game played in good spirits and well won by the Dons.