A cold, wet and windy day greeted the warriors of the Mighty 5ths as we arrived in St Albans for the opening round of the cup competition against Old Albanians 5ths. A strong line up of 5ths was strengthened by the addition of a new back row forward, Eamon Carey. Playing with the usual flippant excellence of Irish imports, Eamon clearly had something special about him as we warmed up to enter the fray once again. Warmed up of course is something of a misnomer for the activities that preceded the game. The concept of getting warm before this game was an extremely unlikely scenario! However our collective spirits were raised when the team hairdresser arrived in his soft top hairdresser’s car. Arriving at the last minute as ever, the arrival of Vic Goddard once again filled the air with expressions of great joy.
The game was an extremely close affair throughout. The final score saw the teams separated by just one penalty. Old Albanians took the early lead in the first half with a strong try scored following some well structured play which simply proved too good for the 5ths to defend. This try was converted to give them a 7-0 lead. However the 5ths managed to come back with a show of rampaging forward play led by Vic Goddard and Eamon Carey. Supported ably by the rest of the pack and with some strong running from the backs (when the ball came their way), the 5ths moved inexorably towards an equalising try. This could have come on many occasions but sterling defensive work from OAs stopped us short many times. However eventually the pressure told and Vic Goddard went over the tryline using his giant frame to its full effect as he crashed through the final defenders. The impact of a dwarf at his back clearly made all the difference as he went over the line! Mark Sellers made the conversion and the scores were back at 7-7. Sellers then managed to slot a penalty through the posts to make it 10-7 by half-time.
The score stayed the same all the way through the second half. Both sides enjoyed prolonged spells of ball control and came close to scoring numerous times. There was a period of around fifteen minutes when the OAs team were camped in the Mighty 5ths’ twenty-two, but a combination of strong forward play and immense tackling from the backs kept them at bay. The final kick of the game was an attempted penalty from OAs taken from around 35 metres out and about ten metres in from the touchline. Although it was a decent attempt, it fell short and as soon as the ball next went out of play the game was over. Both teams knew they had been in a hard battle, but it is the Mighty 5ths from Bishop’s Stortford who will go on to play in the 1st Round proper of the cup.
No one player was singled out as Man of the Match for this game, although an honourable mention has to be given to Eamon Carey as our new Irish superstar. You weren’t good enough to be man of the match though, so don’t get too carried away! However there was an undisputed and absolute winner of the ‘Clearly Useless Numpty Twit’ of the match award. Playing at fullback was someone who is apparently a PE teacher which according to all sources involves teaching the basic skills of catching as well as other things such as tying your shoelaces and generally running up and down. Dave ‘Trigger’ Archer managed to forget completely how to catch the ball during most of the match. Nobody doubted his kicking and running skills. Unfortunately since you have to catch the ball before you can do either of these things, it was a bit pointless. Trigger’s crowning glory was in the second half when, clearly feeling somewhat deflated by his repeated drops of the ball, he took great care to turn his body sideways under a high kick as it approached him so that even if he did drop it the ball would go backwards. Unfortunately this proved unsuccessful as well as he still managed to let the ball bounce forwards when he dropped it again. An undisputed winner of the award.
WE LOVE YOU TRIGGER!!!!!
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