The Fins Are Back In Town

A momentous occasion for Finsbury Park when the 1st and 2nd teams played on adjacent pitches for the first time, drawing possibly their biggest non-cup crowd. Both teams knew they had to post wins.
At the warm up it was voiced that we weren’t sure the opposition were on the right pitches because the Hendon side looked so well drilled. We knew it would be a tough game, but a potential turning point in a season that hadn’t yet gone to plan.

Anthony ‘Tig’ Gait received the kick off and started Park off well, charging up into the oncoming Hendon forwards. There followed a beautiful string of reds, blues and flashes delivered directly off the training field as Finsbury powered their way up the field, culminating in the celebration of the return of Alex ‘Jersey’ Whitehead from his extended ‘wedding-coming-up/wedding/it’s-off-season/honeymoon’ leave with a crash ball through two Hendon forwards to put it down under the posts.

7-0. Good start.

Apparently Luke ‘Almost guaranteed Dotd’ Baldwin scored next. I have no recollection of this, but no doubt it was in the corner from some beautiful backs play.

12-0. Winning ways are back?

Finsbury had been just about holding their own against a solid Hendon pack. Despite momentous efforts from props Stephen ‘strong as a horse’ Morse and Shrek ‘Shrek’ Shrek, some potentially illicit boring in from the Hendon loosehead was causing a lot of wheeling and Park were feeling the pressure. 20 minutes in and at a Hendon scrum on half way Park had had enough; a truly enormous shunt from the FP pack knocked Hendon off step and they came away with stolen ball against a backs line rushing to rearrange for defence. One ruck in the middle of the pitch and the ball was flung out to the awfully leggy Freddie Barton. Round one player and an inside ball to support from Baldwin set up a 2v1 against the Hendon fullback. Baldwin drew and passed back. Barton in in the corner. Who says 2v1 training doesn’t pay off?

19-0. Time to keep your heads in the game.

There followed a period of nearly 10 minutes where Finsbury learnt what the Hendon attacking style was. Pick and go. Pick and go. Pick and.. pass to the first forward on a very tight line. Pick and go. This left Park to face their biggest bugbear of recent weeks, tackling low and in front of the gain line, which they faced admirably. If nothing else it was very good practice. Occasional waist high tackles allowed Hendon to slowly gain ground, 2 metres at a time. Grindingly. Haltingly Eventually. Hendon made it to the Park try line. After being put down a metre in front of the line time and time again, their 7 made it over the Fins try line, only to be held up by not one, but two Park players. The ref gave it anyway.

19-5. No worries?

Mere moments before the end of the half and Hendon being offside on their 22 gave Finsbury a tough decision: Posts, or corner? While the rest of the team began gathering to debate, Freddie decided that from the middle of the pitch he could run around Hendon’s entire team and score in the corner. He proceeded to show us that this was, in fact, true.

24-5. Half time.

Coach Gaz rushed over for a short but sweet half time talk, “You do not let them back in this game”

To start the 2nd half Park had kick off and John ‘Pompi’ Portsmouth put up a gorgeous hanging ball that the Hendon 7 jumped unreasonably high to catch, which transformed what would have been an incredible tackle into a Hendon penalty for a dangerous tackle*.

The kick from this penalty lead to a prolonged period of Finsbury again defending phase after phase of pick and go ball in their 22. The defense was heroic and occasionally illegal, leading to another Hendon penalty, this time kicked closer to the try line. Possibly the only straight lineout throw of the game (another reason for the unreasonable amount of scrums) and a well chosen line from the Hendon 6 culminated in Hendon scoring the first points of the 2nd half.

24 - 10. You do not let them back in this game.

This time, Portsmouth’s kick is successfully recovered by a Finsbury team desperate to not repeat recent history and let an opposition back in over the last 40 minutes of game time. After some fairly messy play from both sides, deja vu struck for Hendon as again an offside call on the 22m directly in front of their posts lead to a gaggle of Finsbury players discussing the merits of kicking for points vs the corner. And again, ball holding dictatorship prevailed over democracy as John Portsmouth tapped and ran. Attempting to mirror Freddie’s try of the first half, he made it around one Hendon player before being taken out by a second and passing off to Dan ‘PC DC’ Cunningham who carried it the final 10 yards over the Hendon try line.

29 - 10. Panic over?

Writing about the Hendon tries is becoming a little tedious at this point.. There were a lot of rucks, a lot of scrums, Finsbury Park strung together phase after phase of some of the best defense your writer has seen from them, but Hendon refused to give the ball up or make any significant mistakes, leading to 20 very slow yards, which ended just over the Finsbury try line.

29 - 17. Panic not over.

Luke scores quite often. Normally from running. Let’s assume that happened again.

36 - 17.

I’m not going to tell you how Hendon’s last try went, if you’ve read this far, you can probably work it out.

Final score: 36 - 24. Back to winning ways.

*Your correspondent is very glad of the well known rugby reporters’ immunity to having to call out your own mistakes, so whoever made this tackle shall remain nameless.