Denton Hurdle Memorial 2011 1st XV

What a weekend for the club! A lovely cocktail evening on Friday which made the BM feel like a rookie, followed by a match day that included two victories, a draw and a defeat. And then on Sunday the club put on a family BBQ hosted by John Edwards and his wife. Heavy drinking for three days solid surrounded by the same group of people, it felt like Tour. I love Tour! What a quality club this is!

Rumors are that Sky Sports are 'courting' Master Naylor

Most of the fines for various bits of stupidity were dealt with in court but one or two people got away with things so I will deal with them and give the usual game reports.

Congrats go to the Ladies, the 2nd team was involved in a draw and their 1st team comfortably beat the Rest courtesy of a fine hat-trick of tries from the speedy Katy Wright. The BM was particularly pleased with how the Ladies got involved, and punished, in Court with Sophie Paddison clearly being the crowd favorite.

The 2nd Team Men’s game was definitely the game of the day with Teachers winning 32-19 in an entertaining and hard fought affair. Chris Stafford scored his first try for the Club so will bring a case on Tuesday and that was followed by a Jeff Sangster try, the veteran finisher showing that he still has a nose for the line after neat handling by the Backs. Kwame McHugh got the third with his first touch of the ball but none of the conversions were made. The Rest 2nds had some useful players and dominated our line out and when their Fly Half stepped inside our flat footed defense to score under the posts Snoo getting to grips with Steve Rob TRFC realized we had a game on our hands. Snoozie can certainly testify to this as he was involved in a running battle with Steve Rob with handbags being thrown at every opportunity. Kwame McHugh stretched our lead when he won a foot race after a kick ahead and was at it again with exactly the same move at the beginning of the second half but the Ref denied him his hat trick by adjudicating (wrongly) that the ball had gone out. Just as well for Kwame as I would have fined him a case. Freedom ‘The Soul Train’ Burrows piled over from a yard out and with TRFC kickers having a day they would rather forget we were up 25-7.

Denton Hurdle Memorial 2011 2nd XV

As is often the case, lots of the old boys came out to honour Denton with the knock on effect being we have a huge squad that wants to get some game time. With mass substitutions taking place TRFC lost its shape a bit and the Rest, who never gave up, came back into the game scoring two further tries to close the gap to 25-19. Disgracefully the BM cannot remember the final try scorer, possibly Alvin or Andre but in the closing moments the game was never in doubt with TRFC fielding its most experienced team (probably ever) with three sixty somethings in Pete, Papa and Chalkie, a whole cluster of players who are fast approaching 50 with names like Bucher, Nick Ball, Alvin, Monty, Snoo, Andre, Butch and Dennis.

And then there was Penthouse. What a legend. Easily the funniest thing I saw all day. Penty joined the game on the left wing with only seconds left on the clock. With TRFC in possession the ball was swung left to our Centres, they combined nicely and had Penty ‘charging’ so to speak in support. I think it was Alvin who sent out the fateful pass which happened to be just too far in front of our silver haired winger. Instead of reaching for it Penty went to kick it, he missed completely and immediately tore his hamstring. Right in front of the Teachers support. You can imagine the sympathy he received….people were crying with laughter!!

Well done to the Twos, I know this game means a lot to you, especially those who knew the great man.

Onto the First XV. We lost 20 -3. Nails get a case in. You dodged a bullet in Court, you won’t get away with it with me. This is your second case of the season and we are only 3 games in! This is not how it’s supposed to be but I cannot protect you all the time. Your kicking was crap!

Dennis Cherry played more than the planned 5 minutes !!!!

Despite the scoreline our performance was actually better than last week. With Tank missing through injury our lineouts were always going to struggle but once again we failed to get any phases together and rarely gave the Backs any go forward ball, which just like last week made it all the more frustrating when the Backs messed up what little ball they got.

Teachers withstood an early onslaught but conceded a penalty right in front of the posts to go 3 down. Midway through the half the Rest got another penalty close to the posts but took us by surprise and ran it, spinning it to their right wing who dived through his opposite man’s tackle for a try. We were fortunate not to go further behind when the Rest Scrum Half scorched down the left wing and was only denied by LT who managed to put him into touch using his face to perform the desperate tackle.

It really wasn’t a good day for TRFC kickers and this was confirmed when Puppy’s first attempt at goal flew sideways at about knee level! He did redeem himself later and we closed the half 8-3 down. Right on the halftime whistle a squall hit and conditions worsened considerably. Though not looking for an excuse this aided the opposition more than TRFC who had a game plan to get the ball wide to our speedy back three but in honesty the 1st team never really threatened the opposition line and gave very little for our magnificent support to cheer about.

Bobby Hurdle makes a perfect catch...

Tackles were not being missed apart from one occasion when the Rest winger ran through the middle of us but after initial good work from the Rest pack their backrower rumbled over from short range right under the posts to effectively put us out of the game. 15-3 down and Puppy was then sin binned for back chat. We withstood the 10 minutes a man down but as soon as he was restored the Rest, somewhat against the run of play scored another to take it to 20-3.

A very disappointing result but kudos goes to the skipper who stepped up into the front row when Baron went off injured. Plenty of heart shown by the whole team but we are going to need to cut out small individual mistakes and get some pattern into our game so that we can release our exciting youngster out wide at the right time.

Plenty to do at training.

A great weekend for Teachers RFC.

BM

Captions please !!!!

Denton Hurdle Memorial 2011 Ladies 1st XV