St Ives Old Bulls vs Westwood Vets 19 - 31
On the National day of Remembrance the St Ives Vets showed what can only be described as outstanding TRUE GRIT!
Some regulars & reserves (& the reserves best friends) went AWOL and so the ageing St Ives vets took to the field with 13 men! As is customary on these occasions the opposing team refused to let St Ives have any of their substitutes and just to get us really in the mood Mark Southern had to leave the field early with a blood injury – time to fire up the mighty 12 Bulls!
With an obvious overlap wherever Westwood wanted to put their extra men it was always going to be a hard fight. Scrappy midfield play lead to 3 quick Westwood tries around the fringes of the pack. This was followed by a fourth run along the touchline by the Westwood number 10. “Difficult to appeal for foot in touch with no touch judges” fullback Jevon Harrison was heard to comment.
Despite all this one way traffic on the score sheet, individually The Old Bulls were standing strong and doing everything they could to take the fight to the opposition.
Jason Price discovered he makes a fairly good crash ball centre (yes that’s No.8 Jason playing centre) and Jez Clarke helped enormously by removing the usual super-glue he wears and kept feeding the backs nicely.
Then came the first of a few glimmers of hope! Jevon Harrison received ball from broken play near his own 22 and managed to give the Westwood pack the slip. Jim Milner No.8 had somehow managed to keep pace and after Jevon clashed with the Westwood fullback was able to pick up an inside pass and score under the posts.
Another piece of broken play saw Jevon again receive the ball and was able to slip almost un-noticed through the Westwood defence only to be felled a yard from the line on the stroke of half time.
The spectators seemed to pick up on the strange belief that was in the air at half time as it was obvious that The Old Bulls looked like the team about to take charge and arguments had started amongst some Westwood players despite their lead.
The Old Bulls took full advantage of both slope & wind to drive kicks deep into Westwood’s half. Fantastic mauling by the St Ives pack saw the ball wrestled to within 5 yards of the Westwood line and the repeated battering finally lead to Jevon Harrison popping up on the blind side and diving over the line. “How can they mark me when I don’t know what position I’m playing either?” Jevon said.
The shock of another Old Bulls score pulled the Westwood side out of their slumber and they finally managed to get the ball out wide and break through to score. Every man tackled hard but St Ives simply ran out of players.
Jevon then received a high kick from Westwood and returned it with interest with only a fullback to beat again. Nigel Kemp had faithfully followed the run and popped up for another inside pass to score under the posts and complete his second conversion. Westwood were forced to touch down over their own line no less than 4 times and another try was fluffed under the Westwood posts. To save multiple oxygen bottles being requested for both teams the referee decided to end the match slightly early by tearing his own Achilles tendon (but many thanks for stepping in at the last minute).
Written by
J Harrison (obviously nothing to do with the J Harrison mentioned repeatedly above).