Golden Eagles Soar to Victory
On Saturday the Golden Eagles played a curtain raiser before the 1st XV cup tie against Howe of Fife RFC in Cupar, Fife. Not to be confused with The Wee Cooper who lived in Fife, Nickety, Nackety, noo, noo, noo!
We assembled early at the ground and it appeared that we were taking this game seriously as there was no sign of any alcohol in the changing room! The kit bag was produced, and the shirt lottery began. This wasn’t for your position number but more for one that fitted. This led to the sight of Big Dave pulling on the number 9 shirt and although he squeezed it over his mighty shoulders it was not long enough, and it did not cover his 12 pack. As he thought the sight might frighten small children and inflame any ladies present he changed it for a better fitting one. Eventually we were all kitted out and in a waft of ralgex we headed for the warm up.
As we only had 13 players a short discussion about positions was held and we went with traditional method of selection. 3 fat blokes in the front row, 2 tallest at 2nd row, team nutter at 7 and the more mobile fat bloke at No. 8. The backs were as follows gobby wee man at scrum half, the one with the most hair product and moisturiser at 10, slight fast guys on the wings, not so slight guys but faster than forwards at centre. After we stretched what needed stretching and ignored any pinging noises we had a quick run though of some moves.
Finally, we were ready to start. Howe kicked off and we gathered the ball and made our way up the pitch. After some good passing and drives by the forwards space was made for Jeremy to crash over from short range to score the opening try. The first half continued in a similar vein with the Eagles keeping Howe pinned back in their own half. There were quite a few handling errors in the first half which was surprising as you would have thought that the Fifers with their extra finger on each hand would have been better at handling. The forwards were dominating the scrums to such an extent that they managed a rarity in this modern age of taking two strikes against the head. The scrums were so dominant that for the second half Howe put some non- front row players in the scrum so that the scrums would be uncontested!!
With Andy Cummings pulling the strings (and muscles) in the midfield we ran in either 4 or 5 tries in the first half. I’m not sure which as I was only asked to write the match report after the game so wasn’t taking notes. Also, as I was playing it would have been quite difficult. The highlight of the first half was Jez picking the ball up from the base of the scrum “sprinting” forward and when tackled gave an excellent offload to Andy Cummings who scampered past 2/3 defenders to score. Luckily this was captured on video to prove that at least part of this report is true and its not all made up.
The second half provided more of the same with Perthshire dominating play. Our scrum half, Mikey, played in the traditional manner i.e. being offside, constantly chirping at the ref and not passing. This led to him eventually not being fit enough to continue at scrum half and move to the wing from which position he managed to score a try. Some excellent handling moves with the ball being passed out wide led to further tries. The highlight of which was the sight of Stevie the prop bringing out
his inner Lomu, charging up the wing bouncing defenders off on the way to score. According to Stevie his run started in our in goal and was at least a 150m sprint.
At the end the Eagles ran out comfortable winners by a score of 51 – 5. 8 different players scored tries with Gareth scoring twice. A very pleasing performance from players who ranged in age from 35 – 54. Players who had not played since school or for over 20 years, while others were only recently gracing the 2nd XV and who had not trained together.
Team
1. StevieWilkie
2. EwanMacnee
3. Smudge(Sorrythat’sallJezputontheteamsheet.) 4. DaveLewis
5. StewartSouter
6. AnthoneyClark
8. JeremyWares(C)
9. MikeRyan
10.Andy Cummings
11.Liam Mowatt
12.Joe Rose
13.Gareth O’Neill
14.David Shaw
Scorers
Jez, Smudge, Andy, Mike, Dave S, Stevie, Dave L and Gareth (2)
Excuse me if I got anyone’s name wrong as Jez’s hand written team sheet was not the easiest to read.
