Travelled to Macquarie Uni yesterday for what was expected to be two tough games. They held the distinction of being the only club never to have lost a game to us even though that was only one fixture per Grade. Notice I said "held" 8)
The Second Grade game was pretty tight to start with - I observed this from the bench. Our kicking was abysmal, handing Uni some easy field position. Our scrum looked pretty good but our lineout was still a little wobbly mainly because we only had one jumping option. Uni took two penalties early for a 6-nil lead before we struck back with a converted try. Then a bullshit lucky bounce gave them another try (unconverted), which they took into the break 11-7.
We threw some replacements on at halftime including yours truly, who was also handed the lineout throwing duties despite not having practiced in the warmup (I'd been begging the coach). I went to loosehead prop, with the guy there moving to tighthead for what I consider is our strongest scrummaging combo. That allowed things to ramp up at scrum time and I can pretty much say dominance ensued
My lineout throwing was fairly accurate in terms of where I wanted it to go, but of four throws I had two stolen. One of them bounced back to their halfback who I caught in the 5m channel and smashed over the sideline. The other was lost at 4 on the Uni fingertips when I was trying to hit our openside flanker at the back. The other two were a picture-perfect lob to 5 and a quick throw to 2 at waist height when we caught their lineout napping. I might get asked back at this rate
I also put in a fairly handy downfield kick when I could see nothing was on outside - the Uni bloke dropped it behind him (fortunate) and that gave us just enough time for us to get to him; necessary as he was bloody quick. Two other forwards and I got there and turned him over. I didn't get to make a lot of tackles in open play, but I think defensively I was positioned fairly well. My best game of the year methinks.
In any case, we had some very large lads out there and started to wear the students down, running in another three tries (two converted) to their solitary penalty goal to take it 26-14. Our scrum started to falter when the last prop replacement came on at tighthead and we got turned - he's not exactly crash hot and the bastards had been step-wheeling all day. I got penalised once for boring in but when the bastard drops his bind and won't push against you, what are you supposed to do?
With that win Second Grade locked in 4th place on the table, and one can only imagine how well we could have gone if we'd had those sorts of numbers and playing talent from the start of the year. We're really starting to gel in the forwards and our pick n go driving is looking good. Looking at the table and the likely results, we'll be playing Rockdale in the first week of finals who like us are a mix of cuzzys and pakeha. We beat them at their home ground (I was not there) 17-14 earlier in the year with team significantly less able than the one we've got now.
First Grade were missing their star #8 and really had to grind out the win 19-16. This was enough to take our Third Consecutive 5th Div Club Championship IF we don't get any more red cards in the last game next week. We're more than likely to win both games convincingly but I really want to get our patterns sorted for the finals - especially my lineout throwing...
