A Vets/Virgins team

Home V Chesterfield Panthers

Pennant

Won 33-21

Trys: Knapton, Armstrong, Harding 3

Cons: Brummitt 4

To say this was a 3s game wouldn’t quite be right. In a desperate bid to honour fixtures a mixture of veteran players and up and coming colts were put together to make a team of both youth and experience. A Vets/Virgins team if you like. It seems to have worked as together there were some great performances from all concerned.

The scoring was opened in the first ten minutes by veteran full back Mike Knapton playing on the wing and taking the ball at pace to score in the corner. A difficult kick for flyhalf for the day Martin Brummitt to get but it was the only one he missed. The old boys started the scoring but the young lads weren’t going to be left out as they were having a good time out there and all of them were playing their first senior game. You wouldn’t have known it by looking. They were all getting stuck in and taking down lads twice their size showing great bottle and determination.

It was centre James Harding, only on because Chris Tate was late, who showed first for the colts as he took the ball with great confidence and slipped two tackles to score under the posts. Martin got the kick and James then went on to score two more similar trys to get a brilliant first half hat trick that put the game out of reach for our opponents. The colts in the game were really enjoying themselves and it was young full back Ed Armstrong that completed the first half scoring as Panthers made the mistake of putting the ball straight down his throat and then left him plenty of room to run through them. He scored under the posts and Brummy slotted the kick over to give us a 33-0 lead at the break.

A satisfying first half and the changes were made at half time to get everyone else on the pitch. Making wholesale changes can change things and sometimes upset a rhythm or game plan and with Chesterfield scoring all their points in the second half you could be forgiven for thinking that this was the case but it was clear that with no first team game they had bought a few of their 1s for the second half especially the 10 who ran the show and had a fantastic boot on him. Take nothing away from our second half players. We were unlucky not to score but we did put up a hell of a fight and made Panthers really work hard for their points. There was some great tackling and dog on show.

Names of note apart from those mentioned above have to include James Brogden at no8 playing like he’s been playing senior rugby for years and Kam Holroyd who couldn’t play prop as he normally does but was a keen as mustard on the back row. The two colt scum halves Toby Taylor and Sam Booth both had brilliant games while it was great to have a father son partnership starting the game with veteran player Richard Carleton starting at 13 and his son Ross playing just outside him on the wing. We were asked at one stage how come we’d got Haydn Godfrey on the pitch and had to point out that it was younger brother Dan who looks a lot like him at a distance and tackles a lot like him too. Got to thank Nik Codd for his input and skippering on the day and we’re going to try to do this again next month.

Colts that played: Dan Godfrey, Ed Armstrong, Sam Booth, Ross Carleton, James Brogden, Toby Taylor, Ben Skelton, James Harding, Kal Holroyd and Dan Wilson. You did the club and Hoggy proud lads.

Our thoughts go out to Nick Edlin who had a terrible injury in the 4s game. Get well soon mate.