Good win for Melbourne

Melbourne 2nds 41, Derby Vets 15

In the world of pennant 4 rugby, the match's can be a bit unpredicatble some times, you turn up to face 13 playes some of who'm have never played before and sometimes you find the first team fixture has been cancelled and you are facing a huge gang of ringers, but from the moment the fixture list was published we knew what we would face against Derby Vets, a strong team of big lads who had mainly played at a much higher level and who would press hard in the set piece and probably try to initmidate us a bit. At the beginning of the season the plan for this game had been to bring a few old heads to the team to stop it being a rout, but as the season has taken place we began believe that we could compete with a standard 2nd team and the younger players would be OK.

So it was we selected a pure melbourne2nds team, with a back row of Joe, Steve Bell, and Dave Porter who hopefully would turn over ball and a front row of Ed, Jordan and Tony day to try and secure our own srummage ball.

The back were the usaul combination of 6 young fast players and Deano, the grandfather of the team.

We had a theory that Derby would get at some of the younger players and try and put them off their stride, and we were determined to stand up for each other and try and keep the ball away from the Derby forwards.

The match kicked off with Melbourne Playing against the wind and reasonble crowd dressed in their finest Christmas sweaters. the early exchanges were fairly even, Joe Stuart should have scored but forgot the ball as he ran through, and it was good to see the Melbourne Scrum holding relatively firm. Most of the play was in midfield but that is fine as Melbourne score most of their tries when they break out not from long spells of pressure.

The highlight of the first ten was Kurtis cutting down the Derby Vets Hooker at the shins when he got the ball at the edge of a ruck and did not move fast enough. Then on ten minutes Melbourne struck Kurtis made a break and passed to Jack Pearce and with only the full back to beat passed to Devon to run in the first try 7-0.

Derby then started to come into it, with Melbourne giving away a lot of penalties and for the first time after a scrum against the head and 3 penalties Derby got close enough for a shot at goal 7-3.

From the restart Derby worked their way up field and Melbourne did not really get near the ball, again conceding penalties and eventually they got a 5 metre scrum, and pushed Melbourne back for a push over try 10-7

Ahhhh this looked like it was going the same way as Donnington, Derby were slowing the game down and stopping quick penalties etc and in their hurry Melbourne forced things too much and there were some forward pass's etc. the Derby Line out was working well and they were driving ball, but Melbourne managed to stop them after a few yards. I for one thought we were going to lose at this point,. but after 24 minutes a new breed of hero emerged (WIll Butler). Ed drowe down the middle of the pitch and after some recyling and quick ball Will Butler broke free to score from the 22, 21-10.

And then 10 minute later a break by Jack Pearce and again Will butler ran in from 22 metres out 26-10.

The half was played out with Melbourne looking the more dangerous.

One of the highlights of the half had been Devon who as the youongest player on the picth might have been initimidated by the craggy Derby players, basically bullying the Derby Scrum half into submission.

It was not until you got close to the Derby players that you realised how big they were in comparison to Melbourne we had done very well.

All through the match we really did well at the break down, as soon as a Derby player was tackled, a combine harvester of hands came in from Melbourne, the hands mainly belonging to Devon and the Back row, it was magnificent to watch and reminded me of one of the tanks in the 2nd world war that were fitted with a flail that blew up mines on beaches, this was really a step up from previous match’s and won us a lot of ball and penalties

The 2nd half kicked off and Melbourne had the wind and most of the pressure, Pip came on for Ed and Booko for Kurtis, and with 3 gone Melbourne held a scrum and quick hands saw Joe Stuart score the most well worked try of the game 26-10. Fulli then got a penalty but missed a further 2 29-10.

With 22 minutes of the half gone, Fulli made a nuice break, passed and then got the ball back, 36-10 and the game was over. Fulli swapped for Tom Line and Nick Parkes came on for Dave Porter.

Melbourne had far more ball/territory in the 2nd half than the first, and really were pretty in control. Bob Stowell came on for his first run of the year.

Melbourne were goign back in the scrum but still getting the ball out, this seemed to give Devon more space at the back, from one of these he went to the blind side, fed Kurtis who ran 50 yards and fed Booko who scored 41-10

At one point the derby winger escaped to run most of the length of the pitch only to be brought down by Booko 5 yards out, much to the joy of the cowd.

With the last play a faster Derby player broke out and ran the length of the ptich to score 41-15. Final Score

Any Game vs derby is tight, and it was great ot win. Melbourne had proved they can beat a larger team,

Derby played in very good spirit and try to play more rugby than Donnington, rather than just a 10 man game. They had a few very classy players notably the winger.

An amusing side show in the game is Jack Pearce and Kustis competing for leading try scorer. during the game Jack gave 4 scorign pass's to Kurtis of which were ruled forward by the ref, and whilst they did not score one, Booko got another to move towards the clubs top scorer.

MVP lots of great performances, Derby spoke highly of Jordan, the front row all held up well, Will Butler was great, but for me its Devon Illiffe, who showed the spirit in the first half that we were not going to be bullied.

A good day in our development and nice to see so many Derby lads in the Lamb afterwards