Up Hill Battle

The 1st XV season official started this weekend but the 2XV have a couple more games before the season kicks off against Weybridge Vandals in two weeks time. The day didn’t get off to the best of starts. There was a mix up between the two sides over kickoff times, at 2pm Sutton and Epsom scheduled start time Camberley only had 12 bodies. Eventually at 2:30 we had enough for a team so the game got underway.

Sutton and Epsom were a big side in comparison, well drilled and had an abundance of men, 22 to our 17. Despite this though the first couple of minutes we had pinned them back into their own 22. Andy Wreakes charged down a low kick, dribbled the ball under the post and dotted it down for what should have been the first points of the game but alas the ref unfortunately didn’t see the grounding. After this the half didn’t really go our way. The lineout was scrappy and discipline poor which allowed Sutton to score 3 unanswered tries.

The second half was a different story. The intensity levels rose and their discipline became worse than ours. Now working up hill the boys got into a good scoring position but just couldn’t find the final ball. Unfortunately they were the next to score after taking a quick throw that we weren’t ready for. Well two can play at that game. Tommy Youngs looped the ball to Jamie Taylor in the middle of the pitch roughly on our 22. Jamie then jinked his way up the pitch beating defender after defender and made a great offload in the tackle. The ball went through two more sets of hands and ended up in the ever-reliable ones of Graeme Fleming. It looked like we were watching a slow mo replay for his last 5 meters up the hill but he managed to fall over the line for the amber and blacks only points of the game.

A special mention has to go to Carl Ulander who put in a very solid defensive display and Tom Youngs who as usual ran the show at 9 but MOM went to Jamie Taylor for his efforts everywhere around the park.

On another day on a different pitch with a couple of different bounces of the ball the result could have been very different. Roll on next weekend with the first home match of the season against Millbrook

TJ Sims
2XV Manager