| Eighteen players fought their way through post-strike transport chaos for an away fixture at newly-promoted Velizy.
We arrived about twenty minutes before kick-off, so didn't have time to run through our usual high-octane warm-up routine. We spent most of out time admiring Velizy's stadium and laughing at France's latest defeat in the World Cup.
The match started cagily with both sets of forwards battling hard for the ball and any possession being kicked into touch. However, unlike last week where Bez and Rick dominated the line-out and leapt like proverbial salmons, we struggled even to win our own ball.
As the first half progressed, Velizy started to gain a bit more possession but each time they ran at us we managed to knock them back in the tackle with a great hit being put in by Eudes who must have been sober for once. We kept knocking them back and gained a penalty within kicking distance which Barks screwed to the left.
And then we conceded a try. We had a scrum near our own 5 metre line which we lost against the head. They shipped the ball along the line, a couple of missed tackles and before I could even raise my head from the scrum they took the ball over the line. They missed the resulting conversion.
In the second half we started well, with Barks kicking us deep into opposition territory presenting us with good line-out positions. We had been quite successful in the first half with our mauling so we fancied we could maul it over the line. However, this wasn't to be. We managed to lose possession a couple of times when stray Velizy hands were not cleared away and then we came very close when prop Nicholas burst away from the maul but just lost control of the ball centimetres from the line.
As we had no forward replacements, our pack began to tire and we started to come off second best in the rucks. We then conceded a penalty which they successfully kicked leaving us 8-0 down.
We fought hard though and came closing to scoring not long from the end when from a ruck the ball was passed along the line. Unfortunately the ball was dropped when it reached the wing.
All in all we were unfortunate to come away from the match with nothing, but Velizy battled hard.
Steve Emm |
