Saturday 5 January 08
Portsmouth Vets 32 Ellingham ii 19
Borrowdale 4 tries, Lane 1 try, Riley 1 pen 2 cons
by Simon Newsham
The first game of the new year saw a packed Rugby Camp with five teams at home
and only four pitches giving the skippers some headaches, in the end it was the
Vagabonds who gave way and kicked off early against Nomads on our pitch.
Dressing room space was at a premium and may have gone some way to making up
Haggis's mind to not bother getting changed, citing a "back problem"
as the
reason why he would not be taking part.
The front row of Jonah, Matt Lane and Gavin Hindle would probably be more than
enough against the youngsters from the New Forest and so it proved time and
again in the scrum when the Pompey squeeze put them on the back foot so much
that the visitors scrum half was forced to feed the ball straight to his number
eight, this was allowed by the lenient Colin Richardson whose whistle was
scarcely heard during the afternoon. His brand of refereeing meant an even
flowing contest, when Ellingham didn't release the ball in the tackle he simply
allowed our forwards to steal it on the floor and play on, two wrongs do make a
right.
on his return to the colours after selling a kidney on e-bay in November.
Dougie
Campbell took the ball on the crash from Len Riley, back after his enforced
lay-off due to his youthfulness, Dougie drew the defence and popped to
Borrowdale who forced the ball over the line, no conversion 5-0 Pompey. The
engine room consisting of The Viking John Whitehouse and the Welsh Wizard Roger
Highgate were working hard but probably conserving some energy as they had to
play the whole game due to no replacements for the forwards.
Ellingham got a try back after they bravely kept running at us, following a
couple of penalties given for offside, the conversion went through to make it
5-7 with ten minutes of the half left. Pompey upped the effort and found
themselves with a penalty in front of the sticks which
that made it 8-7 at half time.
The second half began with a scrum back on halfway when the Ellingham kick-off
only went ten centimetres instead of the requisite ten metres. Caspall gave the
"eyes" to left wing Borrowdale then Bungle picked up at the base of
the very
solid scrum and feinted to go open, Caspall took the ball off him and went
blind
drawing the the cover and throwing a fine long pass to the winger who sprinted
along the touchline beating the full back to score a fine try to make it 15-7
after the kick.
Hooker Matt Lane then got in on the act to score a try which Lenny converted,
so
with a comfortable lead at 22-7 Bungle then limped off to be replaced by Keiran
Godkin who clearly is sticking to his intention of only playing half a game and
to guarantee this, he opted to arrive just as the first half was drawing to a
close.
Bungles injury brought Keiran alongside Chalky who was relishing the game on
the
floor as the referee allowed him to play his style of game just keeping within
the laws, Rod Hammerton was probably getting the backlash of the decisions as
those that went in Chalks favour there were others that went against Rod but he
soldiered on and made the visiting half-backs afternoon quite unpleasant.
A tactical change saw Simon Newsham come on the right wing for Nigel Hodges who
almost immediately was begged to go on as a replacement for the third team on
the adjacent pitch, Hodges answered the call bravely.
The next score was for Ellingham when
ball was intercepted by the visitors outside centre who with youth and speed on
his side cruised through under the posts to make it 22-12. However youth and
speed are no match for age and treachery and from the restart another scrum,
Caspall chose the moment well to employ the blind-side move once again. Surely
they won't buy it again? will they? yes was the answer, Hammerton picked up,
Caspall dummied right and then nipped round the blind side unchallenged, timing
his pass to perfection for Mark Borrowdale to run in for a well deserved
hat-trick. 27-12 now and Pompey looked home and hosed but there was more
tackling to be done, Dave Ladd had a solid game and Bruce and Doogie Campbell
were putting the hits in all afternoon, the youngsters of Ellingham got another
converted try to make it 27-19. But it was that man again on the left wing who
had the final say, latching on to a pass from Dave Ladd after a rumbling
forward
move to score in the left hand corner and put the seal on a fine perfomance
scoring four tries. Another win for the Vets then, Pompey knew that to beat
young quick opponents you don't give them the ball, although two or three
unforced errors gifted the visitors tries I think we can just put it down to a
bit of rustiness after the festive season, next week sees the Vets at home
again
and we look forward to entertaining you once more.
Please give your availabilty to Bungle or Caspall.