01/03/2008
Quintin 80 – Hayes 3
Quintin demolish Hayes in one sided battle
In the build up to our third and final battle against our rivals for the League title, London French, it is interesting to see how the teams have performed against others in the League in recent weeks. French played Hayes away a fortnight ago and had put 63 unanswered points past them, so Quintin needed to go one better.
The game got off to a frustrating start for Quintin. While it was obvious which the better team was, Quintin were giving away far too many penalties meaning that we were unable to keep up consistent pressure on Hayes. However, every time the ball got out to the Quintin backs it soon became clear that it would only be a matter of time before the Hayes defence was breached. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before Sanger broke through and opened up the scoring. From hereon until half time it was one way traffic, but that doesn’t mean Quintin were performing at 100%. From the touchline it was obvious that we are still allowing our emotions to get the better of us, taking our frustrations out on both ourselves and our teammates. Furthermore, we didn’t appear to be contesting enough on opposition lineout – we were taller than our opposition yet they appeared to be getting the ball fairly easily.
As the half wore on, the Quintin scrum became dominant meaning that Hayes were winning less primary phase possession. This was good to see as despite Parsley’s best efforts at bulking up, Hayes definitely had the size advantage up front. We ended the first half with a convincing lead, but Captain Chocolate Flake summed it up at half time when he said that we must cut out the silly mistakes and penalties.
The first ten minutes of the second half saw us performing in a similar manner to the start of the first half – Quintin seemingly their own worst enemies – we were struggling to get on the front foot due to silly mistakes despite having a strong wind on our backs. However, as with the first half, once the Hayes line was breached it again became very one sided. Highlight of the half was Smythe selfishly going for the line only to be smashed into touch. In the heat of the battle it was hard to determine what team the tackler was on
So to summarise, we achieved our objective of convincingly beating Hayes (coincidentally – this is a very similar score to the time we beat Hayes a few years back to gain promotion), but we have a lot to work on before next weekend’s titanic clash. This Tuesday will be the most important session for a number of years – PLEASE MAKE THE EFFORT TO ATTEND.
Man of the match: Gareth for his lines of running, support and unselfishness in shipping the ball out when he could have gone for the line. It is almost as if he wants the fake tan at the end of the season!!!
Honourable Mention: Sanger – Five tries and the usual clinical conversions
Dick of the Day: Smythe – Greed is not good (Gordon Gekko would disagree)
Dishonourable Mention: Dyke for his kick down field from the 22 which ended up going dead. Front Row kicking (?!!!) Only on tour!!!
Tries: So many scored it would be easier to say who didn’t score, chief among these being Smythe.