Quintin conquer the Phoenix hordes!
During various planning sessions held throughout the summer when consulted on his preferred warm up fixture for the League curtain raiser, at no point did Captain Cooney say
‘I tell you what would be perfect, a club that are several divisions higher than us, say level 8, who have no other fixture so can play an entire squad of 50 players rotating their team every 20 minutes to really test us…’
Smith is new to this fixtures game though…
On arrival at the Phoenix club, we were not greeted with Garlic bread dished out by Peter Kay but by a proposition to play their entire club due to St Nick’s old boys cancelling at the last minute.
The proposition was made trickier by Dyke knocking his knee out in the warm up, having inspected Dyke’s leg how he can even tell where his knee is on the leg it unclear but it left Q’s one short in the front row, lucky the opposition had about 12 spares.
The backline had a new look to it with only Pookie and Ian Hogg having played before, you wouldn’t have noticed though, one move which can only be described as sublime involved two dummy switch’s and a miss move behind the winger for Hogg to take a perfect line at pace and wrong foot the full back to score under the posts.
Up front all though the scrum was under pressure for most of the game, the open play was far better with the pack constantly out rucking a larger opposing pack to secure good ball. The training that Rob had run over the summer is already paying dividends, ball presentation being far better than at any time last season.
Hoggy bagged two tries, with Kerr being awarded the man of the match award for a great debut, strong in both defence and attack including a debut try. Damo got his customary fall over the line from 2 metre’s out and Russ got another one for the forwards following an interception and break from Cooney. Cooney has been working on this exact move through countless hours of touch rugby in pre-season, however it soon became apparent that on slightly longer pitch he didn’t quite have the gas to make it all the way, instead started madly looking around for someone to pass to and ignored calls to ‘back yourself’.
Most pleasing was that Q’s won each quarter in isolation as well as a great overall score with no let up as legs started to get a bit heavy.
Having survived an the onslaught of the hordes Cooney unlike Angry Man was in no mood to back down when it came to drinking, happily accepting a hideous drink incorporating a good handful of chopped chillies to underline Quintin’s success, his day was further helped my Emma not losing her handbag all night.
After the match Cooney commented that ‘I am not a selfish man and prefer to help my team mates score than to take all the glory for myself!!! Surely the fake tan last year is a sign of that!!! This was an excellent start to the season, now lets bring on the league next week!
Phoenix RFC 27 - 49 Quintin 1st XV
Tries: Kerr, Jonesy, Hogg 2, Damo, Angry Man, Pookie
Drop Goals:
Penalties:
Conversions: Smith 7