OHs somehow manage to lose to Trinity 15 - 26

1st XV Match Report:

It’s a pleasant Monday evening, and I’ve just about calmed down enough to have light conversation about pottery and renaissance literature with my good wife - and an exciting thought enters my mind. “Oh, the match report will be out soon, that’ll be a hilarious rollercoaster of character assassinations and emotion - one to look forward to”. Fast forward twenty minutes, and I’m lying in bed looking like Chris from Love Island answering all life’s toughest questions and the reality dawns that i’m the dickhead that has to write it, so here goes.

Disclaimer: this may / may not be an accurate reflection of the game as it happened; I’ve got no idea. I blacked out for most of it.

Game Day 1. Where the f**k is everyone?!? The combination of wedding season and RWC means we’re struggling to field one team, let alone two. Credit to those available for rallying round and making it happen. But worry not men, we’ve got Jevs at the wheel - a man built on foundations of professionalism. Wait. What? Jevs is leathered? Not to worry, he can hide in the backs and let the forwards deploy some champagne, the likes of which is seldom seen outside France.

Thankfully Rob P stepped forward and issued a rousing team talk - lads are in the mood and absolutely buzzing to hit the turf for the start of the 19/20 campaign. Jevs has managed to do up one of his boots.

And We Kick Off.

Not really too sure about the first half if I’m honest. If you were hoping for a recap of actual real time events, this probably isn’t the match report for you. In essence 5 things happened;

We scored two tries, a couple of penalties and looked comfortable going into the break with an 8 point lead or so.
I managed to fight most of the opposition / spectators thus landing myself in the naughty books of the dude I can only assume thought he was the second coming of Kerry Fitzgerald.
Jevs sobered up.
We ran out of water about 5 mins in because it was hotter than the sun.
Our travelling fan-base were clearly still trying to find there way to the ground.

Half Time.

Jevs has done his second boot up, and is back in business. Team Talk - nailed. More of the same. We keep at them and we’ll win this......

Circa 5 minutes in im on the refs radar brighter than an F-35 crossing into Russian Airspace, for all the wrong reasons...

It is at this stage I would like to provide Exhibit A evidence that my tackle was in fact, not only legal, but fuckin biblical (Key: red = enemy. Green = the line of latitude).

See main image above in beautiful technicolour

So there you have it. Absolute travesty of a Yellow Card that I will be writing to the RFU about.

Still, sadly I was off for 10 mins to go & bitch / moan on the side. The lads had a stormer with only 14 men limiting Trinity Girls Grammer to only 3 points.

With the Sin Bin over, Hugo decides he needs a rest having played more rugby in the past 50 minutes than the past 2 years combined, so we rotate round.

We don’t really get into our stride and concede sloppy points through penalties which puts Trinity Girls ahead. That said there were glimmers of some really solid plays, we just didn’t seem able to convert and get over the line.

With 5 minutes left on the clock, needing (I think) 3 points to move ahead?!? Thoros (3rd person, why not) is stood at (near) Left Guard next to the ruck. He hears someone from OH shout “watch the guards” but thinks yeah nah, nah I’ve got this. He’s going out wide with this one. At this point I would like to offer Exhibit B, proof that I was in fact totally f****d, and had Dick of the Day gone to anyone else it would have been more of a Crime than a certain Kids TV presenter getting an OBE.

The game was basically over at this point. I think they even scored a penalty to rub salt in our self inflicted wounds. That wasn’t putting a dampener on Dom’s attitude though - who seemed to think we were winning by 4 clear tries with chants of “come on lads they’re f****d, they don’t wanna know”. That’s a man you want in a fight when the chips are down!

I couldn’t possibly finish without mentioning “that kick” with seconds to go. I think Jevs’ lace must have come undone which somehow affected his ability to formulate rational thoughts. He went for it. Which led to shouts of “that’s our Prop” across most of Croydon. Bloody good craic, and actually I seem to recall it almost came off..... almost.

And with that it was all over. We didn’t secure any points, but we brushed off the summer cobwebs and will be ready to “go again” next week. I managed to make friends for life with the opposition supporters, can’t wait for the replay. The number 23 shirt has since been retired from use - for fears over player safety should the mobs come looking.....

Bottom Line. They were terrible, we should have won. We’ll demolish them at Ruxley, no doubt.

Honourable Mentions: All 4 (?) Debutants. Amazing to see the next generation of OH talent coming through.

MOTM: JB @ 9 obviously. Well, for being a hooker at 9 really and absolutely bossing it. Good man.

Great Social thanks to all who organised that. And Hugo the quiz was [surprisingly] quality, definitely needs to happen again.

Until next time brothers. Hearts & Wings. Now get on Pitchero and update it ASAP - cos who wouldn’t want to be involved in fun like this!!

Thoros.

(Ps. Apologies for deployment of a flawed strategy from the start - trying to wind them up which ultimately led to me blacking our for about 40 minutes having wound myself up...). Ref management - completed it mate).