The A-Team travelled to damp, dour windswept Sandal this afternoon. We had to get through the nonsense of the team photo before the warm up, which had led to a large turnout. ‘Handsome Pete Hampshire came just for the photo. Webby had managed to squeeze in a three hour hair appointment but was too injured to play. The rest of us just looked like a bunch of pastey white lads wrapped in cellophane. After the true portrait of masculine beauty was done with, we had the warm up, but Duncan was soon done with his fag and banana.
He must have been on with a promise! So we were ready for the kick off. A quick chat with the Ref revealed that it was his first game back after a career ending injury. He humbly warned he might be a bit ‘clunky’. Both captains smiled and nodded along. Neither had a clue what ‘clunky’ meant, but just shrugged and got on with the match preludes. It turns out their captain was a champion coin tosser, he’d clearly had years of practice. So after the first blood he announced to opt for field position. We kicked to them and the game was underway.
It became very clear that they were a strong side. Which would have been a real problem if it hadn’t been for the sheer might of the A-Team pack. Keiron at hooker discovered that his new tight head prop, named Angus, was probably often mistaken for a prize winning Bull. The scrum immediately moved wherever he told it too, or at least I think that’s what all that Gaelic gibberish meant.
We applied heaps of pressure before Parry neatly shimmied through their line with a hint of a step, a mere suggestion of a dummy and then the strength of hand off the full back. The rest of us were livid, please god anyone but Parry we’ll never hear the end of it!
They attacked with razor sharp accuracy but some heroic defending from Bez and others brought them down just short.
Newly repositioned Jamie Rhodes had some surging runs from eight scoring a pair of tries. Before complaining his heart was going to give in. It turns out someone had forgotten the rum, so he was very sympathetically told to stop being a lazy tart and get on with it. They snook a cheeky try in too. Our hard working captain proved to be once again the best player off the ball but appeared to have left his hands on his covid death bed.
Johnny had a nap in the middle of the field.
They then started a heroic fight back, managing to take control and managing to score a pair of tries. Parry, 10, tried all the moves in his play book, 10 crash or 10 crash. So instead he was coerced into trying something radical, 12 crash! Bez was powerful going forwards but carried on his form of wittering like a cry baby the whole game. Eddie put in a couple of heroic Chiropractic tackles from full back.
They managed to score again but missed the conversion, Parry, quite out of character, kicked 3 from 3. This left the score 21-19 in our favour. Duncan disappeared for his romantic encounter with Keiron. So we brought on the last of the bench. They continued to put some pressure on but we once again found ourselves down their end. 15 metres from their line, 5 metres to the left of the posts with a kicker on top form. So of course I told them all to shut up and opted to scrum! Rhodes surged from 8, the flankers cleared then Ryan charged but two men held him until he rolled right and reached out to place the ball touching a single white blade of grass. The ref didn’t hesitate. He awarded the try. 5 mins left with a conversion 8 metres to the right of the posts to put us away and clear. Parry reverted to normal form and sliced the kick wide. So the game was on.
They kicked deep and Hinchliff caught the ball clean, accelerated, stepped, feigned, played the defence going clean through certain to score then threw the best 20 yard miss pass in A-Team history. It spiralled perfectly, it was long and true and as I said it missed absolutely everyone! They had one last chance for the draw but we quickly turned them over. Last play of the game, winning by 7 and it’s your ball in your own half. So Harry decided to try and have a dart! Luckily before I could kill him he managed to recycle it nicely. So this time we opted to kick the ruddy thing out.
Job done!
