Great Result to kick off the New Year

As I have girlie ribs I was able to savour this encounter from the sidelines and I am lost for words to describe my emotions; angry, frustrated, flabbergasted, dumfounded, shocked, proud and elated....

Casuals had a very mobile, youthful in places, pack and Mellish were a bunch of brutes (not ment to be derogatory but they were big and strong) and it took us a while to realise this, as although we struck first with a very well taken penalty from Ed, the first two tries went to Mellish as were tried to take them on in an arm wrestle and for the most part we came off second best. However, when we woke up to the fact that if we provided quick ball they would not be able to live with us things began to look up. Just before half time Ed walked in a very well worked over lap and it was clear how this game had to be played, we needed to play at our pace.

At half time we were trailing 14-8 but as I came on to have a chat to the guys it felt like we were in the ascendancy and straight away after half time Paul finished a very well work try. This was followed by a beautiful try from James Kittow after an excellent break then offload from Lewis who had a stormer of a game (as I hear did Dave for the firsts, second row is clearly a position of strength at Casuals at the moment). Woody scored a well worked forwards try and James (the centre/winger) scored a cracker right at the end on debut showing great pace bursting down the right wing and finishing very well. (his jug is still owed....next week!)

So that sounds like a typical match report after an excellent game of rugby where we showed, skill, commitment and character to beat a strong Mellish side.......there is one thing that I have missed out; the chap with the whistle! This game saw 10 cards in total, 5 red and 5 yellow. I imagine you are thinking "oh dear must have been a really ill-tempered occasion", it really wasn't, it was played in a very good competitive spirit. There was one minor scuffle which saw a small altercation between Greg and his opposite man. Foolishly people decided to break it up and this resulted in them having to leave the field. In spite of the good nature of the game (with the exception of this one scuffle) Greg and the Mellish second row where shown red as were the 3 nearest people to them! So Shaun and two of their guys missed the last quarter of the game, the watching support dumbfounded! As for the yellows, one was probably justified if it was an international and it was an over zealous referee, for the others (which were indiscriminate as they were shared evenly) the referee seemed to have confused penalties with yellow cards. Probably the most comical was Anthony (The Spaniard) who infringed on halfway, but he took it in good spirit...not!

lets not dwell too much on these bizarre cardings as ultimately it was a fantastic performance and a thoroughly deserved victory, we adapted very well and tackled our socks off. Man of the Match literally could have gone to about 10 different people and saying that there weren't 5 people who didn't play well. Well done boys "proud" is the overwhelming descriptor.

Man of the Match: Lewis Brown