We all knew this would be a tough game, travelling with small numbers playing midweek, under flood lights and against one of the top four teams in the league, I’m sure everyone in the league expected us to come away with an absolute hiding, From the kick off to the end what they got was surely one of the best games of the season. Fast paced and end to end, with both teams wanting to play at a high tempo with big defence, and the willingness to use turn over ball. A few of the Domont players even broke away from Training to watch patches of the game.

Lets not get ahead of ourselves, we lost, but there was certainly no shame in the way we lost and so many positives to take from this game.

Rob, Nico and Christophe carried the ball all game, worked hard everywhere on the pitch tackling hard and stopping them on the gain line the whole game. Rick was a constant thorn in the side of the Pompiers pack. Great in the line out, turning over ball in the loose and tackling more then anyone on the pitch bar maybe Sam and Eudes in the back row, who were everywhere, tackling ferreting for the ball. Eudes even put his world famous family jewels on the line, and we all know how fond he is of those. How’s that for commitment?

In the backs Bryne, the official man of the match, and Neil at 9 & 10 were excellent; constantly looking at what was on, moving the ball at the right time, chasing up putting in great tackles feeding the midfield of Charles and Xavier who tackled hard and carried the ball harder. Duncan at 15 playing through a painful injury constantly kicked us out of trouble when the Pompiers 10 kicked deep. Another great try for Quentin, and even though the score was 11-27 we came close on so many occasions

As Neil has said it’s hard to single out a man of the match there were so many great performance.

Obviously we shouldn’t ever be happy with a loss, but AS Sapeur Pompiers Val d'Oise are a big side, well drilled and fit, they train more then once a week, and they had a squad big enough to field two full teams with subs on Wednesday night. But they were repeatedly outplayed by a team that wanted it more then them and had a massive point to prove. At the end of it though this game was really decided by one thing, with their last two scores coming in the last 10 minutes it all came down to fitness, which is just something we can’t do anything about certainly not at this stage of the season.

We’ve all given a lot this season but we’ve two games left, against teams who have had no better seasons then ourselves. It would great to finish the season with two victories, and prove a few points, so please let’s all try and make the effort to make ourselves available to enjoy the last two weeks of the regular season, before we head off on tour. It’s my first season here but one of the things I’ve been most struck with is the great team spirit and atmosphere within the club, lets use that for the last few weeks, so if you can’t play or you’re not in the match day 22 try and get along and support. Don’t forget it’s a long off season here.

Graeme

Ps, special thanks to Nico who arranged the pitch.