Brentwood U17s 14 Ruislip U17s 32

Brentwood falter…

“Get involved in youth rugby – travel the country,” muttered Nicky as a bleary eyed Brentwood contingent assembled at Ruislip on Sunday morning. The early start appeared to have got to the Brentwood boys (some of them had probably only been in bed two hours before they had to get up again) with one of the most lethargic starts I’ve seen in a long time, taking me back to the days where you knew they wouldn’t actually start playing until the second half…Things were slightly better than this though, the boys started to stir a bit and eventually Sam Morgan and Lewis made enough ground to earn Charlie his first pop at goal, which he made no mistake with, Brentwood 3 Ruislip 0.

After Charlie very narrowly missed at penalty attempt from just inside the half way line disaster struck for Brentwood. Trying to play probably too much rugby in their own half the ball was turned over by Ruislip and they made no mistake in capitalising on the back peddling Brentwood defence to go over for the game’s opening try. The conversion went over, 7-3 Ruislip.

And then it got worse. Brentwood never do things by half measures…Some pretty lax defence on Brentwood’s part needed no invitation for Ruislip to exploit it ruthlessly as they went over for their second try, the conversion missed but Brentwood were left trailing 12-3.

The boys however, to their credit, responded well with James coming so close to scoring that Dee pulled a hamstring as she was getting over excited and leaping about just as he got bundled into touch. Does Dibbo do first aid for spectators too? From the resulting lineout Brentwood were awarded a penalty and Charlie made no mistake in cutting the arrears to 6 points, 12-6 Ruislip.

Brentwood were finally starting to look slightly more with it, the forwards starting to provide more of a platform and the backs beginning to look a bit more lively. After some decent build up Brentwood managed to find themselves in the Ruislip 22 and whilst the ball was knocked on the resulting scrum saw the front row put the nudge on and make life difficult for the Ruislip scrum. The pass back to the fly half wasn’t the best, allowing Billy sufficient time to fly up and put him off so that the kick was sliced into touch (I shall refrain from commenting that the being put off could relate to Billy’s face…whoops…). The resulting lineout saw the ball won cleanly and the forwards giving it some oomph with a strong maul scattering Ruislip defenders, James ending up at the bottom of the pile to claim the try. The conversion missed leaving Brentwood trailing 11-12 at half time.

If the first half start was slow and lethargic the second half start was completely different as Brentwood came out firing on all cylinders and launched attack after attack at Ruislip. The penalty count against Ruislip soon began to mount and advantage was being played as Brentwood lost the ball over the try line. The referee went back for the offside infringement and Charlie made no mistake in giving Brentwood a 14-12 lead.

Brentwood continued to battle on, Dee would have been leaping around all over the place if it weren’t for her previous injury, and after some crashing from the forwards and a bit of jigging from the backs Brentwood found themselves with a 5 metre scrum. It’s moments like these where games are often won and lost and unfortunately for Brentwood this was one where it was lost. From the scrum Brentwood opted to pick up and go from the back and to be frank, got absolutely no where and were lucky to be given the put in to another scrum. Why the option was taken to do exactly the same thing again is beyond me, but then we must remember it’s a lot easier to see these things from the comfort of the touchline. Again Brentwood got no where and at the next scrum gave away a debatable free kick. Ruislip tapped quickly and were gone before Brentwood’s napping defence had even had time to yawn, scoring a length of the fielder and then converting a soul destroying try. Ok ‘soul destroying’ is a bit dramatic but it sounds good…19-14 Ruislip.

And to be honest it all went horribly downhill from there. Brentwood’s heads dropped, a few missed tackles they were under their own posts again and then the same scenario again a few moments later left the final score 32-14 in Ruislip’s favour.

Without wishing to take anything away from Ruislip, they were far more clinical than Brentwood and took every opportunity that came their way, the score line did not reflect the fact that Brentwood could most definitely have won this game and did not deserve to lose by the 18 points that they eventually did.

Fortunately it wasn’t a completely wasted trip, Wasps is only 20 minutes down the road! And that’s my reason why this report is so incredibly late, (even by my standards) I’ve only just snapped out of my Josh Lewsey induced day dreams!