Old Yardleians RFC: Club News
Vandals make hard work of it.
Sun, 01 Feb 2015 12:00
On Saturday the Club's Old Guard with a few young faces took on Evesham 3rds in their W&H Merit
League 2 clash at Tilehouse lane. With the "Australians" giving the front pitches a thorough going over last week it was the long trek to the tundra of the top pitch (which usually passes as our warm up). With the usual laconic arrival of Fridge a slightly hung over Barstool stepped up to the plate to prop. The Evesham side very much like the Vandals with a blend of youth in the backs and "experience" up front came out fighting pinning the Vandals down in our 22 for the opening exchanges before Sam Gouldbourn made one of his now devastating trade breaks right up the middle from ours to their 22 before being finally halted, with the cavalry arriving in short order the move was rounded off by Marcus Hope to open the day's scoring. Without any regular goal kicker we were unable to improve on the score. There then followed an intense period of pressure by Evesham for what seemed like twenty minutes that was met with our customary balls to the wall belligerent defence, in particular our hung over midfield of Barrel & Ace. (Note: ex Solihull RFC players reunion Friday night) Then it has to be said totally against the run of play another searing break by Sam Gouldbourn following a turnover saw him sprint 60 odd metres to score to increase our lead to 10-0, again the conversion went begging. This seemed to deflate the boys from the Vale as shortly after, despite also being hung over, Lee Coates did what only he can do ghosting through thin air tackles to score our third and yes unconverted try of the afternoon, the score remaining 15-0 until the half time break. The few changes at half time took a while to bed in and the opposition took full advantage to open their scoring with an unconverted try. The game entered a short period of stalemate before Barry Gunningham (one of the few three-quarters not hung over) sold one of his effortless dummies to cross the whitewash to restore our fifteen point advantage, as another conversion went begging. This only seemed to spur Evesham on and their second half gear change saw them score two well worked tries, both of which were converted, bringing them to within a point of us at 20-19 with six squeaky bum minutes to go. A very long six minutes, but with ref, Shannon, wearing my watch who am I to argue. But with time running out Evesham tried to run it out of their 22 and a high pass was intercepted by Jason Goodwin at full stretch, who strolled over to put the game to bed. Amazingly we finally managed a conversion when Coatesy managed to bisect the uprights with the last kick of the game. Final score 27-19.