Match Report: 23th August 2004 |
| East Retford 7's How "we" won the Retford 7's Plate............. The day started off pretty dodgily. People turned up in dribs and drabs, many people didn't turn up at all and the whole thing kicked off at 10.30 rather than 12 noon as had previously been mentioned. The initial people who turned up managed to scrape a side together with 3 lads from Retford so a Retford 3rd team was born, affectionately known as the Ba-Ba's. After everyone had dragged themselves from their pits and got to the rugby club we had a squad of 13; myself, Chris F, Blackie, Stu, Kris, Billy, the 3 from Retford; Jay, Sendo and one more (sorry, I forgot your name), Martin H, Simon, Wayne and last but certainly not least Ezza! (I'm bound to have forgot someone). The format was 4 groups of 3 teams, each playing each other once with the top teams going in to the main cup competition and the bottom sides fighting it out in the "plate" competition. I think the other two teams in our group were Dinnington and Dronfield, I didn't take much notice. I did take notice of the fact that their teams were much more "back" orientated unlike ours which were mainly made up of forwards. The first game started before the whole squad was together and we ended up losing. The second game was also lost but we atleast managed to score a couple of tries and got in to the game more. A lack of 7's experience was obvious so dog-leg style defensive lines were all too common and the dreaded over lap meant for a lot of aimless chasing of young lads on the wing. As expected we went in to the "plate" competition along with Retford 2's, North Derbys 2's and Gainsborough. We played Gainsborough in the semi-final and went 3 tries to 1 up early in the second half. Two tries conceded later in the half meant we were 3 points down with literally seconds to go. They were looking to finish the game off when their winger set off making good yards with the ball only finding himself isolated on our left wing. We made the tackle and won the ball allowing Ezza to pick up and run in the winning try from near the halfway line. Our opponents in the final were to be either Retford 2's or North Derbys 2's, for whom both would have been expecting to win if they made it to the final. North Derbys won and were looking for some silverware after their all star 1st team of hitch kickers annonymous got knocked out of the Cup competition. The game started off close with their Welsh scrum half running things with his drop shoulder and side step routine. The scoreline pattern was something similar to; 1-0, 1-1, 2-1 2-2 until we turned the game with some simple yet highly effective rugby. Ezza ran in a couple or three tries to put us in the lead and everyone else got their turn as we scored another 3 or so tries to run out easy winners in the end. Ezza was named man of the match and was presented with a bottle of "champagne" that duly went everywhere, although he managed to drink a bit of it. It was a good days fun and provided excellent hangover cures for the people at Luke's wedding do the night before.
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