Griffins 7 - 12 Police Panthers

Report by Arran Young

You know guys playing rugby is a lot like making love to a beautiful woman – get the basics right such as soft hands, drive it up the middle, a little rough stuff, put a few of your best moves in etc and you’ll be fine. But trying strange angles, getting caught round the back before you’re given permission and going for the try under the posts before you’ve done the hard graft is just asking for trouble...

Police are predictable – a wise old pack full of dirty tricksters – unafraid to finger the odd brown collar here and there with a bit of bag snatching thrown in for good measure. And that’s what they did. Boris was back in the front boosting his chances of getting signed by Elite Modeling Agency. And Big Bird left the Cookie Monster behind to join forces with him to give us a stable propping platform. Going into the match we were struggling for front row players and thanks to DEA sportingly only sending 6 of their team to play the mighty Broncos, Alex “It’s feeding time” Yeun answered our call for help. He hooked and propped all day despite getting totally monstered towards the end of the game – a tackle he was well and truly nailed, bished bashed and boshed but we are extremely grateful for his last minute dash to Boundary Street. When asked about that hit Alex was heard to say “yeah but you should have seen the other guy.” We did – and he was laughing like Mutley whilst holding his arms in a position to make him look like a teapot whilst mincing around and moonwalking backwards. To their credit the Broncos sent over Freddy “La Renard” Laine and a couple of young guys – Rob and Leo who did us proud. Afterwards Leo’s beard looked like the police had been pulling chunks out of it until someone pointed out that he’s only 15 yrs old so the gaps were down to him just going through puberty.

Sean and Arthur are clearly forming a second row partnership to be reckoned with – these guys are tight and seem to instinctively know where to stand in a line out – an amazing feat for forwards you’ll have to agree. The back row of Weasel, Beefcake and Tombraider were quicker to the breakdown this week and it was good to see them supporting each other in open play.

JP was made to work hard all day by their scrum half but as usual he covered the park well putting in some good hits particularly in our drift defensive pattern. Taffy Parsons was solid at fly half and he and Snake Hips Whiting put in some fantastic tackles late in the game when the police brought Egor on at inside centre – yet another Police dirty trick – running a prop at our 10 and 12. Sir Garfield Simms Sobers started at outside centre and showed that like his namesake he has orange hair. This guy will make a great Giffs player – he runs good lines, supports well, hits hard in the tackle and never lasts a full game – we salute you! On the wings The Kaiser and Vic “Hoots Mon” ran hard and tackled hard. Tom “The Great Griffs Hope” Seward completed the team at fullback. Alex “TGV” De Dobrynine is a vastly improved player from last season – his speed on the wing means he is always a threat but his cover, his tackling and experience are getting better all the time. We just need him to learn his way around HK better so he can get to the game on time! Twinkle Toes Norden continued to show his versatility moving around the backline – finishing at full back.

As for the game – we started well – great work by the forwards constantly putting us in good field position – grafting hard and recycling quickly through oh at least 24 phases of play I reckon. The backs made good ground – strong running angles by Taffy and Snake Hips feeding Garfield and the Kaiser – again quick ball in a flowing backs move that saw dummy scissors, switches, goose steps and run arounds, miss moves and back flips before Darren “180” O’Brien ran 120 metres to finish off a superb move in which everyone had a hand. A true team try converted by Beefcake “Sniperscope” Baker.

And then we forgot the basics – like how to support the man with the ball, how to bridge, how to catch and how to tackle. Pretty fundamental stuff really and the Fuzz punished us for it – how often have we scored a try only to undo the great work with some sloppy play? However the Fuzz only punished us for it by running hard at us – the ref punished us for it even more by signaling a knock on by them and then allowing them to play on and score. The pleasing thing for me was that after that our defense really did wake up. The Police have been sticking points on other teams for fun this season but we covered really well all day – the pack deserve a great deal of praise for scrambling well and putting them down hard. One on one the backs took their men or backed each other up – it was a great team effort. However it was our attacking play – so silky – so sublime last week that let us down – those final passes that didn’t go to hand, forcing the pass, being one step off the pace in support etc. That’s what lost us the game without a doubt – that and the ref who for their second try allowed them two knock ons before awarding the points. I saw him in the bar afterwards smiling as he handed over some old parking tickets that were shredded and burned…hmmmmmm. That made the score 12-7 to the Fuzz. We threatened to score so many times but we were living off scrappy ball and the uncontested scrums slowed play right down. However it was not getting the basics right that let ultimately let us down.

We had some fantastic backing up on the bench from the Ma Jais – always keen to get on and help us out – the Broncos were great and it was a sterling effort for them to pile over in taxis to help us out - even Andy “Come to Daddy” Cameron came down and dished out some Biff. Man of the Match was Sean A – He let’s his rugby do the talking on the pitch – the guy is a machine – so wise and graceful for a 26 year old with fake grey bits in his hair. He worked hard like the rest of the Griffs but to carve their backline apart and leave them for dust after 65 minutes just exemplified his fantastic work rate on the day. Indeed had it not been for that break then Snake Hips and Big Bird would have had to fight it out toe to toe for the accolade – both putting it all on the line for the Mighty Griffs. OK so the result will show that we managed to clutch defeat from the jaws of victory – BUT – we showed we won’t just role over and let them walk all over us. We have the nucleus of a great side – one that has shown it can guts it out or play with flair when the situation allows. The spirit in the team is excellent – some great characters and I could see by how much this loss hurt that we care enough to lift ourselves back up and show what we can do. It’s Scum again this weekend boys – we know they’ll have 38 players and be a mixture of experience, youth, locals and ringers so we need to be up for this one! If you can’t get to training then make sure you’re there early on Saturday – let’s give it a f@#king good go this weekend!