Mansfield away

"Were we really good or were they just bad" is what people have asked me when I say we managed an 11 try white wash against Mansfield. We were very good!I am looking back on it with, perhaps, with slightly rose tinted vision as any proud captain would do but I am going to try to be subjective, (ish). I can honestly say this was the best performance by a second team since I joined the club 18months ago.

Given that we scored a point on average every 75 seconds I will not go through every try mainly because I got a kick in the dead early on somy memory is quite shakey anyway and because mine was the best which was an inspired display of side stepping, running from deep and power. (of course you know that is not true but atleast I have final got a Casuals try to my name)

It wasn't one specific thing we did well it was a the combination of us being good in all areas and them being pretty poor. Our first up tacking was good, our organisation was much better and we worked until the end. There are alot people who deserve a mention but our senior citizen Hobbo, who scored a hatrick, is worthy of the first word as he organised and inspired all afternoon. I am fully aware of the grief I will get for writting this but it really was a privilege to be on the pitch with him. This said, there were so many good performances and my shortlist for man of th match had about 10 names. Dave Gunn put in an tireless performance at openside, he ran, grappled and tackled for 80minutes (Higgins he was awful and not good enough for the firsts). Woody at 8 showed why he is the first name on the team sheet each week, Archie put in without a doubt his best performance to date and really is our most improved player, he now tackles and runs hard and beat people all afternoon. Colin was class all afternoon with solid tackling in the centres and showed great pace. Dave (irish) and Anthony (Spaniard) were direct and physical as were Mark Andrews, Rob Walker and Neil Kilbride when they came on. Dan (Carter) Holmes put in a brilliant performance controlling the game and kicking like a wizard putting conversions over from the touch line. The ever improving Bryn at hooker showed he has the minerals and shared the hooking with seasoned campaigner Andy Weedon who showed him how its done. Vice skipper Mark Collery snuck in with two tries and controlled and distributed well. There really were a lot of good performances so sorry if I missed you out, thank you everyone for your efforts it really was a pleasure.

I will spare you all any further ramblings from me and if anyone would like a brief 20minute account of my sensational try I will happily spare the time.

In short it was an excellent performance against a very ordinary Mansfield side who were missing a lot of regulars. Let's take the positives in to training this week and put in another good performance against Ilkeston.

Man of the Match: Mark Hobson