Ok let’s deal with this photo first. Sent to me by one my spies who saw this on a billboard at Gatwick Airport earlier today.

Case!!!! Harry. !!!! You should be wearing No. 1's

Bermuda’s tourism industry is in serious trouble if Little Harry Andrews is the best it can do. LHA, if you are going to be plastered all around the world you need to be wearing Teachers’ Number 1′s. Your friend has made more of an effort than you. Harry please look for an App on your phone that says ‘Bring a case to training’, the App will cost about $45.

Right let’s get to the game. Teachers won 20-17 against the previously unbeaten Mariners.  Some of the facts in this report may be completely untrue, the BM can’t remember much as I think my brain was fried by the heat. It was like playing on the surface of the sun.  At half time most of the forwards dumped their padding to stop themselves from cooking!

For once we started well, Puppy breaking loose early and TRFC applying a fair amount of pressure but Mariners withstood this and after 10 minutes, with their first attack they scored!  To be honest it was utterly shite tackling that let the strong running ‘Sudoku’ charge 25 metres to the line.  Mariners for a while had their tales up and Sudoku made a couple more telling breaks thwarted on one occasion by a try saving tackle by Nails of all people.

Perfect catch Bobby.....

Mariners now have a useful fly half who can kick well so you can imagine the players’ displeasure when the Ref awarded a penalty against our bench for shouting abuse.  The fly half duly stepped up and sent us 50 yards towards our own line.  Now as it happens the guilty party was not on our bench but one of our spectators, Hob-along Greg Fraser.  Greg it doesn’t matter that the Ref has no right to penalize a team because of a spectator, the end result was minus 50 yards but on the plus side it’s 24 green ones in the fridge from you.

By half time we had closed the gap to 3 – 7 with a penalty from Pup. The 5 minute break was clearly what we needed as we came storming out of the blocks in the 2^nd half.  From the Mariners kick off the Backs decided to run it out, 4 phases and about 15 pairs of hands later Puppy dived over for a try which he converted.  From the next restart Dessie twirled out a tackle to set up another counter attack which eventually resulted in a penalty on their 22 which Pup slotted.  It was suddenly 13 – 7 to Puppy and the Mariners still had not touched the ball in the second half!

For a couple of minutes we let them have the ball but then decided to heap more punishment on the boys in green. Another break from Puppy saw him dragged down on the line but the youngster ignored Church who was there in support preferring to wait for his fellow youngster Aldo. As the big Rasta roared in frustration young Aldo dived over from close range.  Now this is Aldo’s second 1^stVX try but the BM forgot to fine him for his debut try so he needs to bring a case to celebrate. Pup converted and we were 20 -6 up.

Goooooooooooo Porter .......

I don’t think we took the foot off the gas, it was probably more like we were out of gas and to Mariner’s credit they are a much better outfit than previous years.  Their enormous pack didn’t do a great deal of running but their new fly half now has a boot to put them in dangerous positions.  As is often the case with Teachers we also contributed to making this a lot closer than it should have been.  First there was indiscipline, talking to the Ref. The penalty kick went deep into our 22 and from there, despite some heroic defense led by MVP Dessie, they burrowed over.  Luckily for us their fly half is much better at kicking out of hand than for the posts as he missed the conversion. 20-12. Then Scotty had a clearance kick charged down and they once again piled over from short range with the FH again missing the extras to make it 20 -17.  Talking of crap kicks from Fly Halves, Nails will be bringing 12 beers for his attempted drop goal….comical but crap!

That final score did seem to waken us up a bit and we finished strongly but we were all relieved to hear the final whistle and head for some shade.

So one round down and we are top of the table.  A good start but still a long way to go.  Jack you are a debtor….sort it out please.

See you all at training.

BM