It was a crisp and sunny November day as the boys looked to bounce back from their lack lustre performance the week before and made the long away trip to Tottenham to take on Haringey Rhinos. It was a fixture that haunted the dreams of vice-captain Joe Thornton as he took a bruising loss to nil in his first foray as captain.
The boys arrived to some bad news in that our prop, Josh, had to drop out last minute due to work commitments. This unfortunately led to Quintin having to start 14 points down seeing as they couldn’t field a contested front row.
Haringey took the kick-off which was taken awkwardly by Quintin and led to a Haringey scrum. The early pressure didn’t cause too many problems and Quintin managed to keep Haringey at bay for the first quarter and their whitewash was kept intact. After absorbing the various waves of Haringey pressure, eventually things started to click and after a foray into the Haringey twenty two some strong carries opened up some spare on the wing for VC Thornton to get his revenge with a nice one-handed finish giving him his first meat pie of the season. Unfortunately, despite what he claims was a wonderful conversion on the angle, this was not given by the referee, 14-5.
With sexy Max stepping into the ten shirt and having an absolute stormer the spectators didn’t have to wait long until Quintin were back in the danger zone, this time South Bank Uni’s very own President, Suphanat, went crashing over. The missed conversion took the score to 14-10. Quintin’s continued rock solid defence and chopping tackles on Harringay’s rather large runners gave them a solid platform to continue the push to get into the lead, this time after a series of pick and go’s at the Harringay line they found themselves with a penalty on the five meter. Skipper Adam took the moment to become inspired by his hero Gimli, as he barrelled through the Haringey forwards from a quick tap to finally put Quintin into the lead, 14-15.
The game came to a slower pace as legs became tired and just before the end of the half Adam’s second attempt at a quick tap put him on the receiving end of a tackle that would’ve crunched any ordinary player. However, Adam is no ordinary player and the tackle nearly took his head off, yellow card for Harringay just before the first half ended. Quintin were well aware of their slow starts to the second half this season and were determined not to let that creep in. Centre Arran made way for debutant Joe Enny as Suphanat moved into the centres. Cam Urquhart stepped into the 12 role and immediately took a flying carry from the Quintin received kick-off. Unfortunately, this led to the end of Cam’s game as his shoulder popped out in the resulting tackle, leaving Cam’s beer drinking arm in doubt for his post-game trip to Twickenham and Quintin with 14. Quintin were by no means comfortable and only a point ahead. However, this didn’t dappen Matt Wallace’s resolve. Despite his countrymen managing to blow a convincing lead later in the day Matt wasn’t letting it happen to Quintin and added a try to his endless turnover stats taking the boys 14-20 up.
With the boys far from comfortable the endless collisions had begun to take their toll as play slowed up. Despite a broken toe Arran soldiered back onto the field to bring us back to 15. This allowed the students to combine and EL-Tari pulled out one of his trademark bulldozing runs, flying through several Haringey players from the 22 to under the sticks. Joe comfortably converted and with the score at 14-27 the boys just had the close out the win. The bruised and battered Quintin boys couldn’t manage to put through anymore but kept their defence strong, meaning the 27 unanswered points was all she wrote.
Given the stellar performance there was no Dotd, instead the men of the match awards went to Max & Matt.