Melbourne narrowly miss out again

Match Report by Rob Foster

Melbourne went into the 5th league game of the season with a visit from Oakham who were sat one place above the green army in the league.
The day didn’t start too great as Oakham and some of Melbourne RFC were very keen to get in the changing rooms but had a short wait as Rob Foster had taken the keys home from training.
Due to the weather that week the game was to be played on the council pitch, which suits some of the older boys in the team as we grew up on this pitch for Melbourne.
A good warm up took place and Melbourne seemed focussed for this game after the great win at Casuals, talk before the game was to defend hard, take our chances where we can and discipline was essential.
Oakham started the game well with some big runners in there pack and had a well drilled lineout, Melbourne did well to defend and stop Oakham in their tracks and for most of the first half Oakham didn’t look like scoring a try.
Melbourne gave a couple of penalties away just inside their own half and with the strong wind the very verbal fly half for Oakham slotted them both 6-0.
Melbourne looked good with ball in hand and some good breaks from the forwards saw us move more and more into their half, after about 30 minutes Will Judge made a couple of line breaks and after one the ball came loose for Ashley (Trip) Stringer to hack the ball sideways and fortunately the ball bounced into Tommy Zoom’s hands who blitzed from the half way line beating at least 3 Oakham backs who simply couldn’t keep up to score the first try of the game, Euan converted the try from out wide 7-6.
Straight from the kick Melbourne again gave away a needless penalty which was slotted 7-9, towards the end of the half Melbourne gave away other penalty and Oakham kick to the corner, took the line out and play broke down resulting in a scrum, don’t really know what happened from here but Oakham’s No8 scored in the corner, conversion missed. Half time 7-14.
The talk at half time was that Melbourne had played all the rugby and we just need to build the phases and take the game to Oakham and pin them back.
Melbourne did this well and played most the game in the Oakham half but throughout the game there had been good defence from both sides.
Melbourne after a couple of good breaks from Will Judge, Theo, Stringer and Tommy Zoom forced Oakham to give away penalties and Euan slotted some difficult chances, Scores 13-17.
In a crazy spell half way through the second half one of the Oakham players seemed to fall over Stringer who was on the floor from a previous tackle and a Oakham didn’t like this which led to a few handbags being thrown by both sides some players coming off worse than others, as a result Stringer and the Oakham No 8 took time out for ten minutes, and a good shout from the Oakham prop that he would sort the situation after the game!
Both sides carried on at the same pace with Melbourne still looking for another try, Melbourne gave away a couple of penalties which were luckily missed by the animated Oakham fly half.
The sin binned players returned but Oakham went straight back down to 14 players when there 6 lost his head and decided to stamp on someone head, from the resulting penalty Euan converted to make the score 16-14.
All Melbourne had to do was close the last 4 minutes of the game out and another fantastic win was theres, Oakham managed to get into the Melbourne 22 and at a ruck the ball spilled out the back for Will Judge to pick up but the ref deemed him as offside and it wasn’t open play?????? A strange decision by the ref, straight in front of the posts the Oakham fly half couldn’t miss 16-17.
Final score 16-17
This was a hard fought game by MRFC and we deserved more as we played all the rugby. Melbourne should take heart from the start to the season as a newly promoted club, we haven’t lost by more than 5 points in a game yet and picking up the bonus points will count for a lot this season.
Just a quick mention for the supporters as they were fantastic and lots of them, let’s keep up the support as well as this helps us all when playing.
Date for the supporter’s diaries is the 9th November Next home game against Ashbourne.