Sils Saxons Renew Rivalry With Earlsdon

After playing in muddy bog at Camp Hill two weeks ago and cruising to victory in the icy blasts of the prior week, the weather gods welcomed back the Saxons with perfect conditions. The omens were good from the start for Saxons, with the return of long-time flanker Matt Bell, following a move to London (Leamington) that had rendered him unavailable for selection.

Earls kicked off and the ball was collected by Brownie, from here Saxons went through four of five phases to make it up to the halfway line. They were eventually turned over, but had displayed a good discipline and willingness to ruck, that had eluded them on prior occasions.
From here it was then Earlsdon’s turn to attack from a midfield position, this came in the form of a direct arrow ball to one of Earlsdon’s (5) big props. He ran directly into Henry who held him up and created an “unplayable maul”. While this was an undoubtedly a good result for Sils, it was a poor result for RUGBY. The resulting explanation of the laws, lead to a further 10 unplayable mauls breaking down an already gritty match even further. The only remaining highlight of the half was an Earlsdon try which came from a penalty on the halfway line. This was drilled into the 22 and kept in field by Steven ‘Mitch’ Mitchell who patted it back to Ollie Powell, this resulted in a fumble and a good chase from the Earlsdon backs put them 0-5 up at halftime.

Welcoming Von back at 9, Saxons started the half brightly, and immediately began putting pressure on the Earlsdon 22. After a series of penalties and straightish line outs Brownie was held up over the line. After a stable scrum, defined by the efforts of the Sils props, the ball was eventually fired out to the backs by a huge miss pass from Bell. This landed in Josh Mallett’s lap with an easy 3 on one available for Saxon’s first score. However, Mallett had plainly not brought his girlfriend and brother to watch for no reason. With this in mind Mallett ignored the overlap and cut back inside the first two Earlsdon defenders and charged towards the sticks. Two further Earlsdon defenders latched on, but were overcome by the catastrophic momentum of Mallett’s desire to impress. A conversion, that was made to look as difficult as possible by Andy Richmond, put Sils into a 7-5 lead. Saxons were again in the ascendency at the sixty minute mark, and looked to put the game to bed. Unfortunately, a strong combination of the Earlsdon Defence and white line fever held them out.

The rest of the half passed by in a dizzy blur of unplayable mauls, scuffles and scums, which was occasionally ruined by brief and regrettable outbreaks of a rugby match. In the final 10 silly season was well and truly underway, defined by a grubber kick through from the Sils tighthead that resulted in a 22. This final kick of the match was fired up field and bounced in front of a resting Laurence White out on the far wing, the big man slapped it back to a charging Josh Mallett. Having fulfilled his glory quota for the day, Mallett drew the last defender and offloaded the ball back to a gleeful Loz to run in his first try of the season with the last play of the game.

By Henry Morris

Not Straight Line outs vs missed conversions
4 – 1
MoM - Laurence White - dealt with 3 Earlsdon tightheads, remained un-injured, and scored a try.
Honourable mentions – Mitch - played against 2 Earlsdon Loose heads.
DoD – Brownie - Quick tap penalty, to knock on in one movement.