Harborne enjoy the return of the sunshine

I have found the way to keep reports even more brief… if you don’t write them for a few days, then you cant quite remember them in as much detail!

Nevertheless, the club captain has missed my correspondent’s reports and in honour of his full 80 minutes of leadership from the base of the scrum and his combination with Clark and Ciarran in bringing to deck all and sundry, here is one especially for him…it will not be as poetic as our laureate in residence Roger Shakespeare!

Having watched England put fifty past Italy in the sunshine, it was time for Harborne to take on Warley at their TatBank ground deep in the heart of the Black Country. Imagine our surprise then, when we were presented with a sunny, dry, firm, wide open running track of a pitch to play upon!

With the final three matches of the season due to be against the 2nd, 3rd, 4th in the league, this was a real potential banana skin in our promotion and league title hopes, not least because the home match vs Warley was tough, physical and a close affair. Unfortunately for Warley, the season has not been kind on the retention and recruitment front and they have lost players throughout the season. The was going to tell.

Warley’s game centred around the pack “podding up” and driving hard and close. This was easily nullified, but not before we had given away too many penalties for getting drawn into the contest at the breakdown, losing patience in our defence. Beyond that, they unfortunately had little to offer outside.

Meanwhile, our backs were relishing the full size pitch and perfect running conditions. The forwards supplied consistent clean ball all day and the backs used it to good effect. As the tries started to flow, the Warley patience ebbed and they resorted to trying to kick for field position as their forwards’ legs tired. Unfortunately this simply handed our back three the ball in space with a chance to run. Hodgy as skipper for the day was marshalling superbly from the 9 position and in fact tactically bossed the game all day. Meanwhile, Aidan continued his return to form and tackled everything down his wing, making ground with ball in hand, and even combining both facets in the second half, stripping a ball and running it back in from 50 yards.

The speed of our play and ability of forwards to link with the backs and keep the ball alive gave the opposition no chance for rest or respite, as their legs tired and cramped our scoring rate continued to rise.

The substitution of Beefy and Tony at half time must have been a real downer for the opposition tight five, run ragged by our backs and now heavily outgunned upfront. Nevertheless we continued to keep the ball alive, and Beefy was soon to show that even Harborne’s most powerful can offload like Sonny Bill Williams, catching the restart, skipping inside before offloading, for Hodgy to make what was initially considered to be his first error of the day in going blind for a 2 vs 6, feeding Joe who cantered round all 6 for a 70 metre effort.

Warley’s woes were summed up at the death when their penalty kicked to our own five resulted in us not only stealing their lineout but playing the ball out from behind our own line and the full length of the pitch for the final score in a 92-3 routing.

All too often such scorelines suggest a game with little purpose or outcome. In Harborne’s case it was a complete performance, and contrary to some of the opposition comments that our pack “wasn’t up to much” the opposite is the case. All day our pack provided clean ball, fast ball and ball on the front foot. Just because it isn’t accompanied by thudding mauls doesn’t mean they weren’t up to much, especially as they more than competed in the scrum and tight, and never once in defence did we look like conceding the try Warley craved.

With three tough league matches and the Cup to go, the weather is getting better week by week and suits our game too, we now must retain the focus to close out every game, and finish on the high needed. We must also start looking to the challenge of next season, to look at our selection to blood new talent and strengthen our depth in all squads. The season is closing fast, and we need to close it out !