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The lads knew on Thursday that
Henry Tones was being thrown in at the deep end as hooker
and that Carl Miller's 19th birthday present was Chocky's
No 5 shirt. Any hopes of training with those two in their new positions were thwarted by a missing generator handle. Please can we have it back. |
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| Against all that adversity the result was
magnificent , even if the performance by both sides was
not exactly entertaining. We began badly gifting Paul Hagan a penalty after one minute, but bounced back with the game's best try on ten minutes. Ed Britton broke from a maul 25 metres out and made fifteen metres before he was caught. Davy Tighe was on his shoulder and whipped the ball out to Milne who fed Hodgy who galloped over. |
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| Sadly he somehow managed to bang his nose into the
hard pitch and was led away with a bad break. He went off
to hospital, but returned before the end, and is likely
to be out for at least a month or so. His mother and
father are on holiday in the USA, and promisisng to
log-on from an Internet Cafe, so they might appreciate
the photo of him looking scarred but happy! David Mullen came on and had a solid game but, with Barffy limping from the outset, we were always in danger with ho backs left on the bench. Davy Tighe didn't have his kicking boots on and missed a couple of pens, while Hagan did bring his and they went into the break 6-5 up.
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In the second half our backs made the most of the possession they received. Panda carved a big hole for himself after 45 minutes only to see his try cancelled out by Hagan on 51.
Then on 65 minutes Davy Tighe got a typical scrum half try [yes he was at 10] when pressure on their right resulted in a bit of space on the edge of a maul. He made sure he went under the posts to secure his kick.
That made it 17-13 and it was tense if scrappy. We breathed less easier on 78 minutes when fly half Magnus Leask opted to round off some Westoe pressure with a mere drop goal to make it 17-16.
We went straight back up the pitch and forced Westoe's pack into errors which saw Carl Miller hack on. He almost made the line himself but laid the ball back beautifully for Paul Rudd to pick up and go over. Davy missed the kick, which meant a converted try could still give Westoe victory. However, we kept them in their half and deserved the victory against a side which finished 4th top in the last two seasons.
Both sides will probably play a lot better this season.