Weekly Roundup 31st Oct 09

Team	Opposition	H/A		Competition
1st	Beckenham	H	Lost 13-21	London One
2nd (Mustangs)	Dover II	A	Lost 8-46	Invicta League
3rd	Beckenham III	H	Lost 7-70	Invicta II League
4th	Ashford III	A	Won 10-29	Friendly
5th	Aylesford XV	A	Lost 34-0	Mid Kent C
Vets	Tonbridge V	H	No Show	Friendly

When a team is at the bottom of the table but playing better week after week, it is vital to pick up the points where they are available and, having led 13-11 at half time, the points were definitely there for the taking for Maidstone  this week. Sadly, we failed to take them - as in 4 or 5 other winnable games so far this season and the opportunity to close the gap on one of the other relegation candidates was lost. Nice to be able to report on a rare try for Andy Bacon though.

The Mustangs found themselves being asked to Kick-Off half an hour early at Dover, which upset their rhythm a bit, but they then proceeded to play really well for 60 minutes before being well beaten in the end by a good Dover 2nd team. Ben Rookledge followed up his recent outstanding displays at open-side for the 3rd team by turning in another MoM performance here.

Normally, when results eleswhere in the club have not been great, one can look to the Dream Team for a bit of good news but they looked somewhat shell-shocked in the bar last night having been ripped to pieces by a young Beckenham third team - and that's in spite of having maintained the normal forward domination that we have come to expect. No complaints about being beaten by a good young team (although one cant help wondering if it would have been so emphatic if Beckenham II had had a fixture, because the result and score could not have been predicted from their current League form) 

One could say the same about the 5th team match at Aylesford, where our 5th team, having been the only unbeaten team in the 3 divisions of the Mid Kent Leagues, lost heavily to a mid-table outfit on a day when Aylesford 2nd,3rd and 4th teams had no game. (One wonders what their players do on a saturday - although I gather from my wife that Bluewater is nice at this time of the year). In fairness, our 5ths might just have had an off day but it defies belief that the score would have been the same had half of the opposing club had something to do other than shopping.  Its also strange that our 5ths always seem to reserve their worst off-days for the same opposition in the same circumstances.  Co-incidence or not, there can never be any suspicion about the integrity of a result when a club has a full fixture card, which is one of the reasons why we aim at Maidstone to put all  6 senior teams out every week. That way, no one can ever question which Maidstone Team they are actually playing against - and there is the added bonus that our players don't have to shop. Its surprising that players at other clubs settle for anything less.

After struggling for any kind of consistency this season, the 4th team took a settled pack but unfamiliar back-line to Ashford III and turned in perhaps their best team display of the season, Frank the Tank getting the 1st two tries upon his long awaited return to action, Ian Davis maintaining his scoring rate of one per season and John Broadley skipping over for a lovely solo effort at the end, Euan Caborn adding the extras.  With some ball to work with, David Ruaux started to show his pedigree on the wing and in the forwards, Chris Finch and Phil Shaw-Brown dominated the line-out whilst Andy West and Ben Lobos did much of the hard work in the loose.  Thanks to Wilson McVittie of Ashford for reffing so well.

Returning to the club from Ashford, it was a shock to discover that the Vets opposition had failed to turn up and the daft old buggers had been forced to resort to playing internecine 7's amongst themselves.  This was a very unusual and very mysterious set of events, as the fixture had been confirmed with Tonbridge mid-week. An immediate call to the TJ fixture secretary revealed that he took a call on thursday from someone claiming to be the Maidstone Vets Skipper, saying that we couldnt raise a team owing to injuries etc.  Further investigation has revealed a bizarre set of events. It turns out that the TJ Fix Sec, who is somewhat hard of hearing and was on the train when he took the call on thursday, thought he was talking to Maidstone when in fact he was talking to the TJ 5th team manager, telling him that TJs only had 6 players for the match.  The TJ Fix Sec then emailed the TJ Team Sec to say that Maidstone couldnt raise a team, who then texted the the TJ 5th team manager to say that Maidstone had dropped out, whilst all the while Maidstone had 20 players - albeit somewhat elderly - champing at the bit for a match and blissfully unaware of the circumstances that were going to leave them playing with themselves (as it were) on saturday afternoon. I guess that the moral of the story is that fixtures are made and cancelled between fixture secretaries and no-one else.

RE

Fixtures for 7th November 

Team	Opposition	H/A		Competition
1st	Gravesend	A		London One
2nd (Mustangs)	Beckenham II	H		Invicta I
3rd	Sidcup III	A		Invicta II
4th	Ton Judds IV	H		Friendly
5th	Hastings & Bexhill III	H		Mid Kent C
Vets	Ashford Vets	A		Friendly

Click on a link below for previous weekly round ups

October 24th

October 17th

October 10th

October 3rd

September 26th

September 19th

September 12th

September 5th