Hardwon victory

Melbourne 2nds had their first home game of 2014, against West Bridgeford who had beaten us at their place back in September, in a high scoring open match. West Bridgeford have not lost much only losing in the league to Derby Vets and scoring lots of points, and in the first game they were the only team who had been able to run around us.

The Melbourne team had plenty of players but we had lost quite a few forwards to the firsts with Ed, Chris W and Chris W, Dale and Morris leaving for duty and Belgrave during the week. Our team had elderly yellow card collector in the front row , and Deano and Booko in the 2nd row but with a strong back row of Elliot, Tom Cresswell and Dave Porter. The backs however were very strong, with Jordan Hollis playing for the first time this season, and Tommy Line and Alex H back from the Manchester folk festival.

West Bridgeford looked pretty similar to us, not to old and not too fat, and fairly fit looking, gut feel was that this was going to be a pretty close and open.

We kicked off against a strong wind, and from the off, West Bridgeford came at us, and with far more speed than we were used to, I think we were all a bit shocked, even though we have had some tough games, people who run very fast is not something we were used to and West Bridgeford had them in abundance. For the first 5 minutes we were under the cosh a bit, the ref had some very modern views on scrums that confused us a bit (keeping your feet parallel) and we did out best to hang on. Then we began to assert ourselves and make a few breaks, Devon was as aggressive as ever and Jordan Hollis started to run things a bit. I am not quite sure what sequence things happened but we made several good line breaks with Kurtis and Joe Stuart making good ground, but were we would normally run in a try West Bridgeford were quick enough to catch us. The forwards were pretty evenly matched but Elliot, and Dave P were very much in evidence tackling and turning over ball.

Then we scored our first try , a good run by the backs who got within 10 metres and fed booko who ran in 7-0.

We then had 20 minutes of pretty good Melbourne play and control up to half time, even though West Bridgeford kept kicking us back into our half using the wind we stopped them getting lineout ball and for about 20 minutes pushed them off their own scrummage ball. (Tony day doing most of the hooking) we really did play well, Jordan was pretty lethal making good ground and drawing players, Jack Pearce powered on with lots of West Bridgeford players hanging on to him, Elliot dumped some West Bridgeford players on their bottoms and we scored two more tries, both from a long way out with Booko feeing Kurtis when he could have scored himself 12-0 and then Jordan running 19-0

The only mild criticism of the Melbourne team is that runners seemed to get isolated without support from each other, or the forwards, (could be something we can work on)

We had played against the wind had most of the ball and probably could have scored more, West Bridgeford had really not looked like scoring. All good

For the 2nd half, Guy Cooper and Alex Dawson came on for Deano and Tom Cressell, and we had the wind, West Bridgeford had lost a couple of their better backs to injury and I think we all thought we would push on and score more, but it was not to be. In the first couple of minutes of the 2nd half Bridgford to clean Melbourne ball in the line and then strolled though our backs in the most simple way to score 19-7. Surely things would go back the first half pattern and we would have the wind but we were very wrong. West Bridgeford continued to have the better of it. Hard to work out why but

We gave away a lot of penalties and upset the ref (Sorry)
The Ref messed with the scrums again and no one could quite work out what to do
The changes in the pack unbalanced the lineout a bit and we did not secure so much ball
The backs seems to have stop making clean breaks and making lots of ground.
West Bridgeford played better than in the first half, and without the wind did not kick so much.

After 12 minutes of the first half the captain was again yellow carded (probably for arguing with the ref earlier) , this is usually a tactical master stroke as we scored 3 tries when it happened last week, but this week West Bridgeford just piled on more pressure and we continued to make life hard for ourselves, and scored again exactly the same way as they did for the first try 19-12.

Melbourne got back into the West Bridgford half and back to 15 players, it was becoming clear that the next try would probably win it, Melbourne had most of the pressure, Tony Day did some huge tackles, and generally we had the better of it, we did however forget how to score, several time slow moving forwards joined the back line to miss pretty clear chances, (when one of our hugely talented backs would probably score) but there was none of the white line fever that the forwards had shown the week before from the back of rucks and mauls.

But as it seemed we would not score, one of the slow moving forwards Booko picked up the ball in the centres and ran in a try without a lot of opposition and scored 26-12 with 7 minutes to go, the next 5 minutes were played out without too much happening, but eventually West Bridgeford broke out to run the length of the pitch to make it 26-19 with 2 minutes to go, we held on to win, with a bonus point All good.

Wet Bridgeford played really well. They are the quickest team we have played all year and play fast flowing 15 man rugby. We were really pleased to have won, I am sure they would do well in the league above. Despite the intensity of the game it was played fairly .

We have got used to being the quickest team in our games and where normally Tommy Line, Kurtis or Jack would be able to outpace anyone, West Bridgeford were if anything quicker and too fast to catch at time. This was a really good test for us

Lots of man of the match action, My wife thought Devon was very impressive!! But I am going with Jordan Hollis for his first half performance,

Next week we have Medan Vale at home before Derby Vets the following Wednesday!!