Curse Of Cuffley

On Saturday the 2nd XV made our way Botany Bay. Sadly this was no trip South to the warm beautiful shores of Australia but instead a seemingly even further trip to the cold North, the remote and rural area of Cuffley.
The team arrived well over an hour before kick-off (and long before the opposition) and looked for inspiration in the Invictus games which were being shown in an otherwise dark clubhouse. Sadly we would not reach loftier (metaphorical) heights than the Great Britain’s men’s wheelchair basketball team as they claimed a bronze medal.
With only minutes to go before the presumed kick-off we returned inside to shelter from the bracing cold. We were then told that the ref was still half an hour away, in Epping, and so kick-off would be delayed.
After half an hour of waiting, the ref remained half an hour away still in Epping. With a delayed start, dark falling before the game finished became a genuine possibility. We, however, were not perturbed. If there’s one advantage Finsbury park should have over other teams its ability to play in the dark. We’ve practiced tirelessly every Tuesday and Thursday in ever changing levels of light, honing our skills in low light play. Erstwhile in Epping the ref remained. Salva, therefore, had to bravely step up for the second week in a row to referee the game. This robbed us of a complete front row and meant the scrums would have to go uncontested. Further it was later discovered they had a qualified ref on their team but failed to disclose this.
The lack of contested scrums and a player turned ref we were very slow to start and conceded in the first minute after an unclaimed kick-off.
The slow start continued with us leaking 4 tries in the first half. Their tactics were simple, after Shin unluckily dropped the first kick they put down his throat due to the swirling wind and cold conditions, they continued to pin us down in the sloped bottom corner of the pitch. One of their tries came from a lucky bounce of a ball that sliced perfectly between two Finsbury players. Their other tactic was to move their rather large front row to the back of their scrum and trundle props up the pitch under the guise of being back row players. Without scrums to tire them out they were able to do this for far longer than they usually would.
With their rolling mauls being effective off the line-out we decided to try and ice call and not engage. We did not, however, communicate this to the ref and as a result they just trundled the ball 20m up the pitch as we watched.
Congratulations have to go to our captain Alex Thomas for managing to play for at least 20 minutes of the game.
When half time came we huddled up, far less tired than we should have been, knowing we should be doing a lot better. We all knew what we had to do, front up, and bring some actual structure to our play. We rarely had the ball for more than a few phases in the first half.
A quick search was done for the actual referee, but in Epping he apparently remained.
In the second half we looked a completely different team. We dominated possession and territory and eventually John Musson scored off the back of a rolling line-out maul. It should be noted that the maul had travelled several metres beyond the try line before he was confident enough to confirm that they had in fact crossed the correct line.
After a period of sustained pressure Ross managed to bag a second try.
Shortly after this I had to go off after taking a knee to the eye and AT deemed I was concussed. Although on reflection I was unable to follow his carefully crafted concussion test of a waving finger with my eyes because I’d been hit in the eye. All the remaining players on the pitch were apparently convinced I had been gouged, but as many dirty tactics as Cuffley pulled, gouging was not one. Moments after I left the pitch Cuffley scored their first try of the second half. It’s not for me to say whether that was correlated to me leaving the pitch, or just the fact they had a scrum 10m out from out try line.
With injuries mounting it looked almost like AT would have to return to the pitch, but he was somehow able to convince an injured Mikey to return to the pitch. The conversation they had further convinced me that I might be concussed. Mikey was claiming in his unique drawl (the origin of which is impossible to pin down) that his leg was bent wrong and he couldn’t play. Yet after the exchange it was Mikey who limped onto the pitch with an unknown amount of time left to play. The side-lines were claiming 20 minutes (the reality was less than 10).
The game wrapped up 32-10 which it is fair to say was not representative of the quality of our team. We were hampered by the lack of a scrum and a ref with the unenviable job of reffing his own team (we owe a big thanks to Salva). If that second half performance can be replicated I think this team might take a few scalps over the course of the season. Who knows what the score might have been if the ethereal Epping referee had turned up and we had been able to contest scrums…
Man of the match went to John Musson after taking his tally to two tries in two games. Though I think more impressive is how much he managed to annoy his opposing prop in an uncontested scrum, he was told several times to ‘see what happens if you do that again’. Also I know for a fact Musson had turned up to a party at 3am (and stayed till after 7) so his ability to play at all should be applauded.
P.S the second time I thought maybe I was concussed was when Parksey asked if I’d written the match report on Tuesday when I had no memory of agreeing to do so. Was just a case of mistaken identity though.