Rugby - But not as we know it!

A game of rugby at last! Many thanks to Vando for providing us with a pitch that, although heavy, was at least playable. I doubt if many games will have been played in this area over the weekend. Unfortunately the occasion was slightly marred by the fact that Birkenhead Park turned up with just 11 players. This meant that, under the league rules, we had to play with 12. Any advantage that the extra man may have given us was, however, largely nullified by the fact that the 11 players from Birkenhead Park did not include a single front row player. Accordingly the game had to be played with 5 man uncontested scrums. With a big front 5 we had expected to dominate the scrums but clearly this could not now happen. As Park had a team consisting mainly of backs, clearly it was going to be hard work for some of our bigger forwards but they stuck to the task manfully.

Although Park opened the scoring with a penalty, most of the play in the first half was dominated by Wirral. Three tries, two of them converted, opened up a healthy lead before Park hit back with another penalty and a rather controversial try (the touch judge clearly had his flag up in the build up to the try). Fears of a Park comeback seemed to have been allayed by another try just before half time. The half time instruction to the players was to play like a team rather than individuals and to make use of the extra man. Sadly those instructions were rarely heeded and Park then stunned the home crowd by running in three tries in the opening five minutes of the second half. All of a sudden Park were leading by 32 – 19. Fortunately the Wirral players then woke up. Although they were still sometimes guilty of holding on to the ball too long, they quickly re-established their lead with a further four tries to run out comfortable winners. For the record, the Wirral tries came courtesy of Jack Quinn (two tries but still no cigar!), Jonny Mattey, Craig Dolan, Joe Murray, James Reeve, Tom Routly and Ryan Horton. Tom Routly landed two conversions and Ollie Whorton added another.

Well played to the lads from Birkenhead Park who battled to the end. From our point of view, although we saw some fine individual tries, there is still plenty of room for improvement. We have some big games ahead of us over the next few weeks but hopefully we can finish the season strongly.