S 7 FYLDE VANDALS
Asides saying such idioms as “cooler heads prevail”, as I’d love to use that, but our yellow card count was diabolical, I’d instead love to end on a quote from American Football coach Lou Holtz which I find much more appropriate, exclaiming:
Oh ok, so there was an incident, or even a series of incidents that I should report back on.
After a incident on the pitch, a large proportion of the sideline full of supporters were calling out to draw the referee’s attention to a high tackle, the referee signalled to carry on. In something that I cannot condone on a personal basis, our stand-in photographer for Steve Davies (of SD photography) to be known under the secretive moniker of ‘Photographer 2’ tried to embarrassingly offer his glasses to the referee… For several reasons, I don’t condone that kind of behaviour on a rugby pitch. The ref to his credit took it quite well, but that’s beyond the point. In pleading with the referee, but not knowing the full story of why our stand-in photographer was being sent behind the barriers, Tom Bailey in a very positive manner exclaimed that ‘he won’t be able to take good photos of us now from that far away’.
“Don’t tell me how rocky the sea is, just bring the darn ship home”
FINAL SCORE: HOPPERS 10: 27 VANDALS
Stephan Kuhn scoring the only conversion of the day, between both sides (although the readers can probably have an educated guess at how many conversions were missed). Up next, we welcome Aspull Development XV to the Woodlands, who are always a tough side to play against. After a tough start to the league season, which included two losses on the road, they got up and rocking with a strong home win against Liverpool St Helens 2nd XV. Now the above is my own version of events, but as a founding member of the sides social media page I have recently experienced recent clamp downs on free speech, normally from people on a power trip that can’t prop – so inserting this sentence in particular is a test within itself for whether a meagre social team match reports are heavily edited even for Facebook.
On an unrelated matter, I’d like to publicly thank Mr Chris Rumley for stepping in today to be our photographer for the game.
The same Tom Bailey literally carried us through parts of the game, only to sadly get sin binned at the end of the first half (ok this isn’t a linear way of reporting but whatever). Worse still, not that its sacred or anything and devoid of public shaming, but he then went on to share a photo of an old league table with an associated caption which won’t be publicised, but without breaking code, I can disclose that he was promptly called out for it being a year or so old… Anyways, the game ended as the Vandals winning by 27 points to 10. We had a stand-out midfield pairing of Connor Wood and Tom Hodgkins, and a backrow that were firing on all cylinders. ‘Cometh the day, cometh the man’ rings true right here, but after putting up with 50mins of torrid abuse from the Hoppers front 5, massive respect has to go to stand-in tighthead prop Oliver Smith. I’m already aware that I mentioned this at the outset, but special recognition to that man, who after some bruising carries of his own, still asked questions of himself after the match, but he shouldn’t worry after all the praise from others. Hoppers did have a strong pack that were looking forward to dominating at scrum time, no doubt about it. But after 50 mins of scrums, they didn’t win a scrum penalty, and the game moved to uncontested scrums as the only out-and-out prop in the Fylde side, Sam Phillips had to leave the field with a nasty injury to his shoulder. Hope he recovers soon. And since we were out on the town in a celebration of sorts, I’m glad I ended up coming home to meet the self-appointed 3am match report submission deadline, as I’d likely be still waiting to be served at the bar in Lytham House otherwise…
Peace out.
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