After a three week lay off the A Team showed no signs of ring rustiness.
Stress levels hit max at Baxter Towers as between my first pint on Friday tea time & pre match fish & chips on Saturday we had 7 changes to the team & 3 changes of ref ! In & amongst the usual “ I’ve tripped over a daisy & stubbed my toe nail” (Matt Johnson) & “I’ve got to go Christmas shopping with the Mrs” (Smouty) we also had “Might not be back from New York in time” from Tom Forshaw ! A -Team class.
More evidence of A – Team class in the form of our new medical man. For a while now we have been a bit worried about having no one at our games with any medical training ever since Aaron the chiropodist packed in (although Leroy did once have a knee trembler with a nurse in the disabled bogs). New man Pete rocked up with a ringing endorsement from Shelts that he is a bit old & crap but a medical man. Anyway, it turns out that he’s only a bleedin’ heart surgeon ! Could come in useful bearing in mind the team age demographic & hitherto unmitigated disaster of the youth policy. There were also palpitations a plenty just before half time when our cheerleader Mrs Wood got her pom poms out.
The pre match changing room power failure had seen Sowers getting himself all in a tizz & mixing up his undies (dirty & clean ones) & his jock strap (….er dirty) but nonetheless we got off to a flyer. As regular readers will know by now, Locky usually packs fairly equal measures of “brilliant” & ”biz” in his bag, but this time he had left his biz in the bathroom & scored a couple of scorchers – coming onto the ball at what could almost be described as “pace”. In an A Team, not Usain Bolt, styly of course.
Sports fans if you had drawn the name of the next scorer in the pre match sweepstake you would have got a bit sweary, screwed up your ticket & gone home.
Even the Cleck lads were surprised when new Quinquagenarian Sowers gloriously dummied & sidestepped his way over from all of 3 millimetres. His post age 50 try scoring tally already equals his pre 50 tally. Can’t remember who scored the rest but I think Pete got one on debut before being called off to go & kill someone on the operating table.
The game was notable for our complete lack of anyone in the team who had ever even thought about playing scrum half……… or so we thought until it was discussed beforehand & it turned out that the A Team’s play anywhere man Stan had actually spent the Friday evening watching instructional videos on You Tube. He was duly force fed a banana & a pack of Marlboro lights & told the job was his. Not sure exactly which videos he had been watching as he proceeded to shovel a series of lazy lobs & squirters in the general direction of Locky at 10 who did a passable impression of Mr Tickle in retrieving most of them.
So whilst the first & second teams were conceding tries a plenty & making heavy weather of overcoming their opponents, the A Team kept their line intact to maintain their unbeaten home record. Mind you, strangely enough Cleck did kick a penalty at 50-0 down which strikes me as being a bit like pulling a fat ugly thing at last orders – technically you’ve scored but it’s all a bit embarrassing really.
