Fendy's Match Report

By Matt Fendick

Saturday 10th February 2007

On an overcast and damp day, LSA travelled down to Warlingham to participate in the club’s first ever cup match in the Surrey Cup competition. With the prospect of taking on a side who are achieving admirably in the league above us, the boys knew that it would be a tough afternoon.

With that in mind, a relatively low intensity warm-up saw a few choice words being passed on prior to taking to the pitch. Which, with no disrespect intended, was as undulating as a links golf course. Playing up the many mini-slopes for the first half, LSA received the ball, which was recycled rapidly to our rather surprised resident Aussie, Pete Howlett. Failing to find touch down the right hand touch line began a phase of play which last for about 2 minutes. This ended with Warlingham touching down just besides the uprights. Not the ideal start, but the Green Machine kept their cool. Roughly 5 minutes later, from a 22 restart, Warlingham’s flyhalf showed good pace to beat the cover defence and cross over for a 12-0 lead. At this stage, LSA were not performing remotely near their collective and individual abilities. However, this was to be the last threatening siege on LSA’s try line.

From the subsequent restart, the sizeable forwards picked the levels up a gear, and so began their influential dominance of the match. Tenacious scrumming, efficient work at ruck and maul time, in conjunction with disrupting the Warlingham lineout were stand out features from the front 8 for the remainder of the match. Securing valuable possession for Man of the Match Dave Blackburn, filling in at scrumhalf, was vital to the result.

This is no more evident in the bulk of the tries being scored by the big units up front; a hat-trick from Anton Kriel, and tries from the engine room partners Justin Rose and Christiaan van Rooyen were most notable.

The second half saw a scrappy affair taking place - the inclement weather had set in and began to affect the handling of players from both sides. This however, turned out to be favourable with the resultant scrums being controlled by the LSA pack. Most of the 40 minutes were played in between respective 22’s, with the exceptions being Trevor Grundelingh adding to his tally of 4 tries last week, and the final movement initiated by our resident man/beast Jake Hoddinott breaking blind and ending up with Bokka crossing the line following some impressive interplay. Final score, 45-12.

The next Cup fixture sees us take on Chobham, who are leading London SW3 and by the reports on their website seem to be a well organised team. Prior to that though, it is business as usual as the focus returns to the league campaign, and an important game away at Old Emanuel.