Round 5 Old Streetonians Home – Winning Ugly
Final Score: 41 – 26 Win
Man of the Match: Chima Kalagbor
Dick of the Day: Rhys Davies
Squad:
1 Rob Wixey
2 Adam Clarke
3 Luke Rhind
4 Xander Bobir
5 Morgan Schuler
6 Victor Alonso Gomez
7 Peter Lacey
8 Michael Buchan
9 Dave April
10 Slade Siameja
11 Martin Holley
12 John Sanger
13 Fidel Brizuela
14 Joe Thornton
15 Tom Rouse
16 Tim Henschke
17 Rhys Davies
18 Chima Kalagbor
The sunny blue skies that greeted the team on Saturday were in stark contrast to the miserable conditions at the last run-out two weeks ago. Unfortunately so was the standard of play, but somehow the Quintin lads put together enough rugby in a very stop-start affair to walk away with what was a comfortable win in the end. We had a full squad available for selection however Old Streetonians decided to enforce the ridiculous 18 player cap which if I didn’t already mention is ridiculous – is ridiculous. So firstly big thanks to those unselected guys for coming down and preparing and it turned into a great day for the first home game of the season.
With Rainier, Alex Raue and Alex Mitchell attending a top-secret prop convention Wixey and Luke stepped up to fill their sizeable boots. And with an equally badly timed locking convention seeing Kosek and #Mansfield2019 also out of action the forward pack became a flanker experiment and it became obvious early that the set piece was going to struggle but special credit to all the lads who had to play out of position.
The sun at our backs and the familiar scent of Canadian goose droppings at our feet it finally felt like home and it wasn’t too long after kick off that we deep in Old Streetonians half with a penalty in-front that Sanger quickly converted to points. Dropping the KO we then gave OS a chance to attack but managed to repel a decent amount of phases before winning a penalty and working out of the red zone but not before losing VC Luke to a headknock which would see us drop to 14 men for 10 minutes and the scrums to go uncontested. The lineout went astray but again OS couldn’t capitalize and after some patchy play with both sides guilty of not respecting the pill we found ourselves back inside the 22 with a dangerously positioned scrum. Memories of the two 17/18 fixtures were obviously still fresh in OS memories and half the team were yelling “10’s going to step” before the scrum packed down. Turns out the OS oracles were correct as Slade cut back inside his opposite and scored untouched under the posts with Sanger tapping over the conversion.
The return to the old KO formation lead to the return of the old KO routine as another kickoff was spilled and this time OS were able to string together a number of phases before one of the big carriers was able to muscle over and show Quintin not everything was going to go their way. The rest of the half was so ugly I’ve purged it from memory and all I know is OS scored again to take an unlikely 13 – 14 half time lead.
Although not quite Cheika-esque, a muted spray from Slade at half time appeared to wake a few lads up and the next 15 minutes saw Quintin take complete control lead by the substitutions; Tim Henschke made an immediate impact, backing himself to go blindside off a scrum 8 out and the power to drive through the covering flanker (+2 Sanger) and De Train Chima was throwing himself into everything and everyone with destructive carries and brutal defence that earned him Man of the Match honours.
OS worked back into attacking position before the human tackling machine that is Pete Lacey (having recovered from an earlier headclash) dropped his should to dislodge the pill and then quickly regathered and distributed in contact to Slade who had the pace to run in his second from distance, +2 Sanger. Pete switched from distributer to recipient bagging a meatpie of his own next, +2 Sanger, before Buchan was first to react at a messy lineout, collecting a bouncing ball and taking a quick 20m before offloading to Adam who must’ve had is superman underwear on as he out-ran a wing and fullback to cross the line and put the game out of reach, +2 Sanger with a beautiful strike from the side line and a 100% return on the day.
Morgan Schuler recovered from a decent shot to the ribs to help close out the last 25 mins, backing up Chima and Pete with some huge hits of his own but with the result wrapped up the rest of the game sort of meandered towards the close before the final play of the game saw Slade run from his in-goal to the halfway before linking with support who continued into the 22 before a final confusing penalty saw OS return fire, tapping quickly and shrugging of some tired tacklers before chipping and re-gathering to bag a pretty tidy individual effort and pinch a losing bonus point with the 41 – 26 final score.
Overall, while it was far from our best performance, we were good enough to walk away with a comfortable win in spite of missing several personnel in key positions and that’s a testament to the depth we’re building and the work being put in at trainings. A fourth win on the bounce and we have put ourselves firmly in 4th spot as the table begins to spread-out.
Next Weeks Information:
Next week we take on the table leading Harlequin Amateurs Away at 3pm.