St Ives Old Bulls 19 vs Oundle Vets 12
The Old Bulls started their season with a well fought win over Oundle Vets at Oundle this Saturday.
The sides were evenly matched to start with both sides being short of a player as the referee failed to turn up and St Ives captain reluctantly offered to referee.
Despite this, it was a free flowing game with The Old Bulls getting the better of the heavy Oundle pack, allowing Winger Jonty Jones to score the first try of the season after taking on his opposite number round the outside and beating him.
The Old Bulls looked threatening whenever they had the ball and the centre pairing of Stancombe and Spencer allowed no one through in defence.
The two 2nd rows of Chris Ford & Ivon Peplow, played their first games in this difficult position and did a stirling job, even managing to take three scrums from the Oundle pack.
The second try was scored by the other winger Dusty Miller who received the ball from outside centre Paul Spencer and then broke through the cover defence to score near the posts. Spencer converted.
The third try was from Flyhalf Nigel Sweeney who caught a kick from well within in his own half and round several opposition players to score near the posts. Spencer converted after bouncing the ball off the posts.
Oundle scored both their tries in the second half, the first after some good hands along the line with the back row in support and the second from a disputed quick tap penalty 10 metres out from the Old Bulls Line. Only the second try was converted.
With players getting tired there were many more mistakes made in the second half with tempers getting short and sloppy work at the rucks and malls causing a 10 minute enforced rest for Dusty Miller( who was also fined heavily after the game for missing the try line early in the second half)
New recruit Tony Hilton played well at openside and stole many a ball from the opposition at the lineouts as well as supporting the backs in open play.
Man of the match went to Ivon Peplow for completing a full game (and at 2nd row as well)
Next Saturday sees the Old Bulls in the pool looking for a home game.