Cotham Park RFC The closest Rugby club to Clifton in Bristol

With a strong pack and some scratch and sniff backs we didn’t know what to expect from a challenging fixture against Whitehall. With their 1XV a mere four leagues above us we went into the game with tepid anticipation. Some last minute drop outs and injury headaches meant we had to call up Alex from the 2s to play through injury in the scrum half birth. This, coupled with the ‘shoe-horning’ in of Karl at flyhalf, meant that the backs weren’t at there normal strength. Still we went into the game knowing we all had to put in a strong performance to withstand the Whitehall attacks. I won the toss and when asked which direction to play I was a little perplexed, I think there may have only been a square of about 5m x 5m that was actually flat. So I selected the end of the mogul field that seemed to have the greater quantity of downhill sections and we began. The opening 5 minutes were exactly what we had expected, they threw everything they had at us, with ruck following maul, maul following ruck, but our defence stood firm. We weathered the early storm and began to build up our own head of steam, their young, bulky backline didn’t like the strong running put in by the back row with Pete and Ben making some excellent inroads into their defence. We played well and had the better of the possession and territory for much of the first half. There were a couple of occasions though when they overlapped the back-line and looked to be certain for tries, luckily I hadn’t drunk very much on Friday night so my pace and hand eye co-ordination was still fair, and I was able to ‘collar’ them back at the last opportunity to save the tries. The whistle blew for the end of the first half still 0-0 and we all had a new-found belief that we could get a result in this cowfield.

Alex had to leave after the first half and we brought Pete in to fill the scrum half role. He’d never played there before so he was ecstatic! We began the half brightly and again pilled the pressure on the Whitehall defence. They to had made a couple of half-time substitutions, most noticeably of all was a large, black male in the centre. Every time he got the ball he threatened and at one stage the only way I stopped him was by pulling his shirt over his head in an ice hockey-esque manoeuvre. Although his running was strong he did make there back line very one-dimensional and with me and Joe in the centres they never looked like scoring. In defence said Whitehall centre had quite an odd case off tourettes, whereby he kept screaming “car crash, car crash!” at me. Odd you must agree, but more funny than threatening. Anyhow, I digress. We worked our way down to the Whitehall line with some good positional kicking and we camped out on their 22. Some quick thinking from Marcus, playing with only half a lung I might add, saw him leaping like a gazelle to charge down their flyhalf’s attempted clearance. The ball trickled back over the try line and Marcus touched it down, 5-0 Cotham. Karl went close but failed with the conversion.

The 2nd half continued much in the same vain with the forwards dominating the loose. We again pressed the now weary Whitehall team back into their 22 and set up shop. They eventually gave away a string of penalties which led to Skusey diving close, the forwards recycled the ball and Marcus, quite sensibly, took the ball out of Will’s hands to dive over from close range. 10-0 to the Black and Whites!

With only about 10 to go Whitehall got the bit between their teeth and started to come back. The tackles got harder and the retaliations more fierce. At one stage a small Kiwi bird walked on to the pitch and started squawking about its neck, but few listened. So the game eventually came to an end with Whitehall knocking on close to our line and from the scrum Karl needed only to take a step backwards over the dead ball line.

A truly excellent performance from everyone was what brought about this victory, though not the prettiest game, to beat opposition this organised and to not concede made me a very proud Captain. Special thanks must go to Alex for stepping up and playing through injury; Karl and Pete for playing out of position; Marcus for playing and scoring two with the lung capacity of four year old; and of course to Whitehall for hosting us and the free jugs afterwards.

1. Tom “Ginna” Wilkinson
2. Ben Skuse
3. Simon Gale
4. Ben Kelly
5. James Harland
6. Dave Wells
7. Pistol Pete Ashby
8. Marcus Wooldridge
9. Alex Sills
10. Karl “lightest flyhalf in the league” Davies
11. Andy Rossiter
12. Craig “Stringer” Coulstring
13. Joe Hanson
14. Tim “How you doin” White
15. Jim

Subs

16. Will “Sicknote” Kite
17. Pete Chillcott

Next week, we're at home to St Mary's. Remember to let Moley(07787 170265) and Stringer(07962235878) know your availability.