Mustangs Vs Old Elthamians – 28th February 2009

The Mustangs travelled to league leaders Old Elthamians last Saturday, in what promised to be an exciting encounter following the Mustangs excellent win over the same opposition earlier in the season.

Once again, late drop outs caused some disruption to the team but nonetheless, a decent side took to the field. As expected, Elthamians looked to play a fast paced game, mainly through their fluent back line. Elts were extremely aggressive at the breakdown, counter rucking to great effect.

Elts lost a player to the sin bin early on, however this did not affect their attacking intent and it was the home side who were first to score despite being down to 14 men. A chip kick over behind the Maidstone defence saw the right winger beat the defence and dive on the ball to score. Maidstone had three relatively simple penalty attempts at goal, in the half however unfortunately all were missed. Elts extended their lead again via the right hand side of the pitch, as Maidstone, despite having numbers present to snuffle out the attack, were caught ball watching and Elts were given an overlap which they exploited to full effect and once more scored in the right corner.

So at half time, the score was 10-0 to the home side, but could so easily have been 10-9.

Playing down the slope, it was the Mustangs intention to play a tighter game and look to use the forwards to make an impact around the ruck and maul. Unfortunately Maidstone weren’t able to do this with any consistency. However, the visitors did start to have some joy wide out, with several good runs from outside centre Gareth Hill and winger Tom Harvey eventually being stifled by good defence from the home side. Unfortunately, and in contrast to the home side, Maidstone lack of speed to the break down meant that all too often promising moves ended with a turnover in possession, as the faster home side would in the main be first to the break down and even if they didn’t win the ball, they slowed down Maidstone to good effect allowing their defence to reorganise.

Elts 3rd try of the afternoon came from nowhere, as a decent clearance kick from Harvey was collected inside the Elts half and run back at Maidstone. 4 missed tackles later and a good off load saw Elts score again, a try almost gifted to the opposition. The same can be said of the final score of the afternoon, where Maidstone once again were caught out by a kick and chase and were sluggish in the chase to the ball. However it was unclear as to who, if anyone, actually managed to touch down, but the ref decided from 30 metres away that Elts had scored.

The game finished 20-0 to the home side, who were very worthy winners, however Maidstone were definitely accountable for poor defensive work for at least 2 of the tries, and will need to cut out these errors in the games remaining.

Man of the Match this week goes to Jack Lamb, who tackled his heart out once again. Little John Francis also had a good game, and showed some of his more experienced and bigger in frame colleagues how to tackle and ruck.

Div of the Day – you can take the man out of football as they say, and for his petulant spitting of the dummy and subsequent hurling of the ball at a member of the opposition, the award goes to Gareth “Grange” Hill, for his pathetic football style hissy fit.

Team:-

Maytum, East, Thurgood, Coles, Flynn, Davis, Lamb, Simpson, McPherson, Whitehead, Harvey, Hipkins, Hill, Francis, Coomber, Vickers, Wainhouse, Sullivan

Coaches – S Neaves, G Whitehead  Physio – Catherine Grudy  Manager – Laurence Waters