Cotham Park RFC The closest Rugby club to Clifton in Bristol

Gloucester 3 South - Saturday 08th October 2005

Forgive me if this report does not meet the usual high standard set by our press officer Posh 'Power-House' Cook. His talents far outweigh mine, both in his literacy skills and his physical prowess. I digress... to the match:

T'was a miserable morning on the day in mention and as I pulled into the car park the unmistakeable Cotham aroma penetrated my car, I knew it wasn't going to be a good day. As I entered the changing rooms everybody appeared to be in a rather buoyant mood, even Trevor was on time! Not only was this strange but he was also sporting an offensive 'kiss-ball' injury! Which resulted in his head being heavily bandaged producing a more than slight resemblance to a pint of Guinness!

And so to the game, we were all surprisingly confident for a mish-mash Cotham team. Sporting the VET's shirts and with stomachs full of stolen lucozade, spirits were high. We started the game well and pinned the lumpy Tetbury team deep in their half, but as always we failed to take advantage of our possession and slowly we lost our impetus. They placed a long kick through, which was fielded well by smiling Joe Hanson, but in a bit of a mix up the ball went lose and a Tetbury player was able to fall over the line with the ball. Try Tetbury. Forgive me if my match details are hazy, too much cider on Saturday evening has left me with vast memory blanks but I'm doing my best. I'm pretty sure something similar happened for the next score; with Ben Butt this time dallying on a kick through and their player taking advantage to score another try. In a stroke of what we thought was good fortune their captain had to be subbed during this attack! Sadly this led to them bringing on a disgruntled little chap who was upsettingly good at kicking - BASTARD!

On to the second half, we were trailing something to nothing (helpfully vague I know), but with the wind and the rain at our backs we were still in the game. As ever I was instrumental! Cutting and jinking and getting absolutely nowhere. I got through once with blistering pace(?) and chipped the Full Back, only to be brutally felled like a giant redwood in Yellowstone. From the resulting penalty we pummelled their line and eventually worked our way across the pitch and got a penalty on their five-metre line. Up stepped our Stalwart, our rock, our smut-peddling workhorse Dezy to take it quickly. With baited breath we expected his trademark burst for the line, sadly following an unforgivably geriatric tap, he fumbled forward, turnover ball!

After this bombshell, we wiped away the tears and continued. The team pulled together and worked back towards their goal line, where Jimmy cranky slotted two quick penalties to add some respectability to the score line. This lifted the team and an inspired piece of play from the afore mentioned pint of Guinness, which saw him dive over the line for what looked to be an obvious score. To our amazement the Ref disallowed the try for a "Black hand under the ball", never to be the one to play the race card, I can't help but think this is some kind of persecution!

The latter stages of the half slowly degenerated into a stalemate with nothing really going on. Things started to get a little fiery and Bowny took exception to something and kindly let a Tetburian hit him a few times - how polite.

The game eventually petered out and there were a couple more tries for the opposition thrown in the there somewhere. All in all it was another mediocre Cotham performance that only goes to emphasize that if we are indeed planning on getting promoted this year, things are going to have to change!