The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

The Robert Burn’s poem of 1786 gave John Steinback the title for his novel and tells the tale of a farmer uprooting a mouse nest whilst ploughing a fielding. Having sped-read the poem it works on many levels and poses many questions… “Who cares?” being the foremost. Others include “how did anyone understand him?”, and the timeless “Not a lot goes on at the farm methink?.” Anyhow, this leads us nicely in the analysis of the Beckenham match.

Eighty minutes seems a short amount of time in the general scheme of things but on a rugby pitch it can be an eon. Having finished on a high in the previous match and discussed playing at intensity in training and before the match, Sidcup spent the first ten minutes on the ropes and practised their tackling. Beckenham possessed a type cast crash-ball centre who ran straight and hard and Sidcup spent a great deal of time debating whether tackling around the legs would eventually be the way forward. From a scrum of unknown origin, Beckenham broke blind assisted by a powerful wind and headed goal-bound. Sidcup scrum half Stamato, in his own words; “They ran down the blind side (wind assisted) from a scrum…I ran after him…Got excited that I had caught him up then got over aroused as I heard that Italy had won their rugby league World Cup opening game against Wales and thought I would give it a rugby league style tackle and go nice and high… one for the cameras...........got bounced off! xxxxxxx!” The other eye witness reports were not so kind.

Soon after, the aforementioned opposition centre charged through the first line of defence and fed their fullback coming through a large gap at pace. There is some difference of opinion whether he fell over or Captain Stephens made a try-saving tackle from fullback, but either way he was forced to pass the ball to a winger in support who was caught five metres from the line by Sidcup winger may. Quick ruck ball was moved swiftly and the home side had scored down the blind side again. Fortunately, neither try was converted. At this point, Sidcup Skipper Stephens (nice alliteration there) rallied his troops with some “under the posts again” rhetoric and things began to change.

Sidcup showed some good ball-in-hand stuff as we progressed up the pitch in difficult conditions; wind and lack of fitness being two of the issues concerned. Possibly, the visitors tried to force the pass too much, attempting to play free-flowing rugby when “sticking it up their jumpers” in good old fashioned rugby weather conditions. When rugby players last wore jumpers, I do not know. Around the 20 minute mark, front row forward Glenn Ennals was forced to retire with a recurring shoulder injury (an unusual place to get gout) and Tom Harrison was brought into the back row to make his club debut and run around energetically in a youthful manner (his youthful exuberance watching the England V Australia match the following week was duly noted as well).

The line-out was going well with Fozy jumping at 2 and returning student Chris Orford at 4. Later that evening, at his father’s 50 birthday party, photographic evidence was displayed that Chris is in fact Ronnie Corbett’s love child and has since been genetically altered. The visitors were certainly good enough for a try at the end of the half with some good catch and drives but unfortunately panicking with the ball often lead to mistakes. “Of mice and men, dear boy, mice and men”. The scrum was solid too (I fell over when I read that) and the visitors had a good steady platform for the backs to work with. Twice in one season??? Don’t go expecting it every week.

In the backs, the legend that is Jon Mitchell (former 1st XV cavalier and general devotee of the open game) tried to make things happen at 10 and always looked to attack (forgot to add foolhardy optimist). Scrum half Matteo(Bouncer) Stamato was once again shepherding the defence well and even offering plenty of good ball to the forwards to run onto and at Mitchells command releasing the ball to the backs. The new centre partnership of Dan McNally and Chris Neal were now solid in defence, especially in the absence of Tom who had been dropped to the 2’s.In attack, they ran some effective lines and only occasionally run of the pitch. With the home side now pinned in their 22”, the back three of May, Stephens (now to be called May-not) and Leighton countered attack well as the opposition attempted to clear their line. There was even a rumour that Stephens and May were seen scissoring on the counter, however without photographic evidence we find this hard to believe.

Having played the first half uphill and into the wind and rain, Sidcup now had the elements in their favour (the climatic variety, not the electrical kind) and pinned in the home side in their own half. When Beckenham looked to clear their lines, they did not get far and any respite was only temporary with the Sidcup lineout providing a good platform to attack from, entirely down to the hard work of genius coach/manager Egan. Probably 15 minutes into the 2nd half (though this report is mostly based on the testament of skipper Stephens and he does not wear a watch on the pitch) Sidcup found themselves just inside their own half. Fly half (and Legend apparently) Mitchell put in a delightful kick to the corner and under pressure from Leighton and Neal the fullback had no option but to kick the ball into touch. Fullback Stephens, showing unheard of quick-thinking, took a quick lineout and May sped over the line to score. Bereft of the legendary boot of Edwards, Dan “The Man” McNally volunteered to take the conversion and proved that the adage of “The Man” was inapt.

Sidcup seemed to be having more possession than the home side but lacked the clinical edge to finish off moves. Beckenham scored against the run of play, the ball was spilled forward in a tackle (culprit unnamed) and once again the home side sped down away on the counter. A low kick into the wind was gathered by a Beckenham winger and he evaded pursuit of the sprinting Stephens but a clear 60 metres or more. (Ok, a little bit of artistic license there.) Again, the kick went unconverted.
Sidcup returned to the offensive and pinned Beckenham back at every chance. Centre Dan MCNally redeemed himself and put in some lovely kicks out of hand to put Sidcup on their opponent’s 5 metre line. (Please note, the redemption of Mr McNally will take a lot more than a few well-placed kicks.) Sidcup launch another catch and drive but the visitors are thwarted by some indiscretion or other and the referee awards them a penalty. Andy Hind taps and goes but is stopped short of the line, offloads to Kevin Pooley who near dies of shock and is also prevented from scoring. Finally the ball spills out to the ever-lurking James Head who dives over the line to score! Realising that cometh the hour, cometh the man, skipper Stephens steps up to take the kick. Alas, it was either the wrong man or the wrong hour.

The last ten minutes of the match see Sidcup continue to keep Beckenham penned in their own half. As Beckenham attempt to clear their lines time and time again Messrs McNally and Matteo pin them back with some wonderful tactical kicking. The Sidcup backs move the ball well but simply keep running out of room on such a small pitch.

From another line out on the Beckenham 5 metre line, Chris Orford (who has had a storming game allegedly) catches the ball after another excellent throw from hooker James Head. The pack move in quickly to drive the maul goal-bound and debutant Tom Harrison scores his first try. With the fate of the match in the balance, prop forward Andy Hind convinces the rest of the team that he can "kick" and steps up to attempt the conversion. Two matters arose from the resultant attempt, the team are far too gullible and Andy is in a state of denial.

After a terrible start, Sidcup 3’s gathered themselves and showed guts and determination to fight back on more than one occasion. A pleasing performance in many aspects and again there are many positive signs that once this team gels, there will be a lot more “W’s” than “L’s” in the stat’s column. Plaudits to Orford for an outstanding performance apparently, even more so considering the parental cruelty he faced as a child (you need to see the photos). The front row produced one of their best scrummaging displays of the season (going back slower than usual?) and even the lineout worked. Congratulations to Jon Mitchell in his first run out in several years for both surviving and thriving in the match to Tom Harrison for scoring on his debut.

This week, the threes are at home to Old Colfians. At the time of writing, Sidcup threes are awaiting a response from the visitors to see if the match can be moved to an earlier kick off time of 1.00 to allow all to catch most of the England V Argentina game. When we have any news we will pass it on.

GE 04/11/13