2s WIN by a point at Downhill's Park

Finsbury Park 2s vs St Albans 2s
Saturday 15th October 2016.

After the closest of near misses last week, with the 2s falling so agonisingly short of beating the league leaders, this week we hosted St Albans 2nd XV at home.
St Albans have had some very big wins, particularly beating Harpenden (who we lost to, on the road) by 80+ points, so we knew we would be in with another massive challenge.
Blessed with full squad availability meaning for the first time in the club’s history we actually had too many players (42 available) for our two teams. This meant that we could field a very strong 2nd XV team to give us every chance of securing a much needed win.

We kicked off with the wind and sun on our backs and Fly-half Jon Dixon (10) put the kick deep into the St Albans 22, enticing their big, ball carrying forwards to run back into our defensive line.

0-7
From a kick over the top, the St Albans Full-back (their man of the match) decide to stretch his legs and basically ran around the whole team! So much for not letting the opposition score first. Their scrum-half adding the extras from in front of the posts.

5-7
We traded carries forward and backward for the first 10 minutes, determined not to slip to an even bigger early deficit (like the previous week), and the pressure was suddenly lifted when Patrick Joyce (7) took a crash ball close to a ruck from scrum -half Ted Coday (9). Pat broke the guard tackle and with no fullback covering the blindside, he raced for the left corner flag, dotting down. Dixon stepped up to hit the conversion from the wide but just pulled the kick across the face of the posts at the last second.

12-7
Finsbury hit again with the strangest of tries and retake the lead. Awarded a penalty on the half-way line on the left side, Dixon misses touch with the kick for the corner. St Albans decided to run it out from their line by getting the ball quickly again to their fullback – but this time the defence is ready for him and with the prowess of Alex Wood (12) and Greg ‘The Viking’ Bloom, the ball was quickly turned over and thrown wide to Joe Darragh (14) on the wing to touch it down. Dixon made up for his earlier miss (and slightly odd penalty) by converting from the right.

Disallowed try
This sparked Finsbury to start putting more players into the ruck to win the ball in the breakdown, and from another turnover, Wood found a gap and zoomed for the line. With only the fullback to stand up with a side step, Woody decided to hold the ball up and then go for the hero off-load to Tom Kemp (6). With not enough time on the ball and two covering tacklers – Tom wasn’t able to get visible downward pressure on the ball and so the ref bizarrely took play all the way back to a penalty on the half-way line to Finsbury! Surely the 5m scrum should have been the call there. But not arguing, Dixon put the ball back into the St Albans 22 and out for a lineout. Unfortunately, St Albans stole this and were able to clear their lines.

12-14
St Albans took this as a sign that the game was not at all lost and managed to exploit some tiring legs to score. Their 17 year old, protégé scrum half stepping up again to land the conversion.
Yellow card Finsbury Park (Dixon)
St Albans, breaking for potentially their third try, come around the corner of a breakdown and Dixon goes high in the tackle. 10 mins in the bin for a reckless challenge and leaving Finsbury down to 14 men.

12-21
The floodgates have opened! And the yellow card proves costly as the St Albans outside centre dances his way through 3 tackles, takes on the Finsbury Fullback Mike O’Donovan (15). Mike tackels well but with a deftness of hand the centre is able to get the ball away in the tackle to the supporting fly-half who spots the space and runs in to score under the posts. 5 minutes left to play in the half and Finsbury’s heads have gone down and we are yet again chasing a game. With the St Albans scrum-half being 100% from the tee – we now have a 9 point ball game.
Yellow card St Albans (Fly-half)
As if to equal our stupidity, the St Albans 10 also goes high in a tackle on Liam Todd and sees Yellow.

Half-time
A rousing half-time talk from Coach Mark Chapman and Captain Salva Peya, points out where the game is being won and lost and pushes the owness on the importance of keeping a clean sheet in the second half. 9 points is doable, after all, we scored 17 last week!

15-21
Alex Wood – having another Man of the Match performance, carries the ball up the park before offloading to Izaiah Flavius-Turner to make more hard yards. However, St Albans are penalised for going off their feet, and after a brief discussion between captain and vice - Dixon, back on after his sin-bin, takes a shot at goal after a penalty for not rolling away. He dissects the posts to cut the deficit.

22-21
As if stirred on by letting the team down. From another penalty, this time Dixon taps and goes diving for the line to score Finsbury’s third try. Converting his own score takes the lead back to Park with 8 minutes left to play!
Penalty missed St Albans
It takes a lot of things to win a game of rugby. Especially one as close and as well fought as this one. St Albans opt to take a kick at goal after a penalty for handling in the ruck. Their 17 year old scrum-half, having a fantastic game and with the weight of the win on his young shoulders, pushes his attempt wide of the left upright. Agonising for him, but a lifeline for the Finsbury lads, who take that as the catalyst (as if another was needed) to batten down the hatches and not let anything else through. Shortly after the ref blows for full time.

Full time. Finsbury 22 – St Albans 21.
A shout-out to Finsbury’s newest player Michael Goodridge. Brand new to the game, came on for a half and did himself justice. Great carries into contact. He’ll be one to watch in future weeks.

Teamsheet
1. Alex Thomas
2. Salva Peya (C)
3. Sean Burke
4. Andy Wilde
5. Adam Strowger
6. Tom Kemp
7. Patrick Joyce
8. Alex ‘Jersey’ Whitehead
9. Ted Coday
10. Jon Dixon (vice)
11. Shey Vincenzie
12. Alex Wood
13. Greg Bloom
14. Joe Darragh
15. Mike O’Donovan
Subs
16. Izaiah Flavius-turner
17. Steve Williams
18. Liam Todd
19. Mike Goodridge