Bright was the day and blustery the air as OCs looked to stay atop the greasy pole of London and South East 2 by taking on the other blue-wearing south-circular based old boys team: Old Alleynians. The previous fixture at their place had been a tight run affair coming right down to the wire and though they had slipped off the top of the table a tad they were still no mugs and a strong performance would be needed in order for Colfes to do the business on their local rivals.
All we needed was a good start and after some promising early attacks it was clear a whole team effort would be required to break the deadlock… nah scratch that just give it to Brendan. Mr McMillan deciding enough was enough, put the team on his back and bust through half a dozen tacklers and gassing half dozen more to score a try as fine as his new trim. Like they always say: look good play good. Potter missed the conversion in the tricky wind and we were back at it. Once again our options were; teamwork, structure blah blah blah or just let someone score a wonder try. Opting for option 2 Will Smith took matters into his own hands. Just as we were drafting his obituary as OAs biggest bloke lined him up Jiggy rose from the ashes and wriggled free like some hybrid phoenix-worm. Then through some lovely footwork and a surprising amount of power from someone with comparable body mass to an orphan kitten he was able to find himself under the sticks and the happy owner of a new story to brag about until the cows come home. (In fairness it was a tidy try).
However in true OCs fashion we decided to shoot ourselves in the foot, marching OAs from their goal line to ours through penalties and our guests capitalised with disciplined goal line attack to pick and go over close to our sticks. 12-7.
Fortunately we did not lose our heads at this point and as we begun to have success in the wide channels through the likes of Berridge and Verissimo we found ourselves back in the opposing 22. With quick ball generated and the defence scrambling, skipper (and seemingly fountain of youth beneficiary) John “The Quad” Fletcher picked out a hole and ground through the middle of the D.
HT score: 19-7
No oranges at half time but a few haribo and a few words of wisdom and we were back at the coalface, this time with the wind at our backs. We had been having success at scrumtime all game but thanks to the oafish footwork of your author at the base we had perhaps not reaped the rewards, hopefully the front row will still be my friends. But anyway even a broken 8 is right twice a day so eventually the junior O’Malley bundled over from 10 metres out off the back of the scrum, exposing a disconcerting amount of gut in the process (maybe 5 portions of Mary’s cooking post training is excessive).
The bit was now firmly between our teeth and we really started to put a performance together. Once again nice line breaks saw us in the opposing 22 and good hands down the line put young Connor macdonald in the corner for a TMO worthy finish. Heartless arbiter of neutrality Brian Edwards keeping his flag down for a change to keep the curly haired whippersnapper’s try count up.
We finally decided to end the game as we finished, with a superb individual try. Close to the line our resident social media guru and bosh-merchant Alex Verissimo was held up over the line but from the resulting Goal Line drop out (exciting new rule that) Sam “The Prince of Peanuts” Wallis took the kick and like Alexander the Great at the Battle of Gaugamela surged through a gap to score the third fine individual try of the game. Sam had been cracking all day on both sides of the ball and went home with Trevor and the Alicadoo bottle of fizz to boot, just needs to take better care of that elusive teddy.
Final score 40-7 and a load of happy faces on our side. Commiserations to OAs who are a good bunch of lads and have struggled with injuries all year, but anyone who’s spent enough time in OCs knows how often the boot is on the other foot and I’m sure they’ll bounce back soon enough.
A great day on the pitch followed by a great night in the bar, shame about the England game but my mum’s half scot so maybe I’ll just turncoat. Folkestone away next week so anyone who fancies a nice bus to the seaside to watch a bunch of blokes beat each other up feel free to come and support.
Author – Andy O’Malley
