Valley's Premiere Sponge Bods Go Down In Flames Against Tigers

I’ll keep this short and sweet, OK. The Valley Knackered Nags, competing in the Veterans 40+ League, are quite frankly the premier team of the club at this time. There, I’ve said it.

On a mild spring evening at King’s Pork, the usual outpouring of blame upon Friday evening traffic and bungling taxi drivers was voluminous on the Nags WhatsApp chat, as kick off neared and we had seven players.

They dribbled in one by one and once we’d enlisted the support of Damian and Richard from Kowloon RFC and once Ross Bendix had staggered up the hill from a 4-pint late lunch, at Misty’s – we were in some sort of semblance of a starting XV against the Tigers old folk.

Captain for the night was Guillaume, the French bomber from Discovery Bay, who used his gallic charm and wit to request water breaks every 10 minutes and a 20-point head start to Valley for having five players*** aged 50+ (Damian, Freddy, Olly, Olse and Boozer) but, like our backchat in the game, the ref was having none of it and looked very tempted to pull a card on The Bomber** before the game had even kicked off.

** no reference here to the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior by French special agent terrorists in Auckland in 1985.
*** special acknowledgement of Jamie Michie, aged 49.5

The all Chinese Tigers backline threatened all evening but it was the pale, bald one that kept the inept Valley defensive patterns twitching like a bastard on Fathers Day. Tigers knocked up two quick tries before Ross half sobered up, tapped some bums and gave Olse's dangle berries repeated gropes at scrum time.

Freddy Laine was as busy as a one-armed taxi driver with crabs and his mate Olly Stratton went one further by being busier than a one-legged man at an ass kicking competition. Valley made some good line breaks early on but just couldn’t quite beat the last defender until a 60-metre kick return by flanker Andre - beating several flailing orange stripy big cats, and then offloading to Dylan who bobbled it to Olse, winding back the clock and storming down Fat Man’s Alley, who put Richard away for the try with a masterful basketball pass over the top of defenders.

Tiggers scored early in the second half before the Nags started to dominate in the pack. Off a slightly botched 8, 9, 10 move off an attacking scrum, Jamie Michie picked up a grounded ball, stepped off the left foot, put the foot on the gas and blasted through four tacklers to dot down under the posts.

From the restart, the juices were starting to flow for the men in red and black. This time, a slick 8,9 move off the scrum from half way produced results as Freddy and Thomas worked the ball to sober Simon Potter in some space. The 38 year old, showed some pace, blazing down the right flank in front of a bewildered Tigers bench (yes, they had subs). Approaching the last defender at the 30 metre mark, Potter ignored hos two supporting teammates and instead took it upon himself to hoist a centering kick. Boozer saw his moment when the bounce took the ball away from the fullback and it was just Boozer and the ball and the dead-ball line.

As he stumbled and lunged at the ball, hoping for a electrifying NRL-style try, the ball bounced away from him at right angles. For one ephemeral second, lying there with black pellets all over his face, he knew he’d blown the chance to equalize. But as he looked up, the ball took a sharp bounce back towards his sorry carcass and at full stretch he was able to clamp down on the ball as it landed, inches before the dead-ball line. The Tigers linesman was not impressed and put his flag up but as the referee arrived on the scene moments later, peering into Boozers soul, quite rightly awarded the try.

Trailing by two points, Valley had run out of steam and Tigers completed one more decent effort to win the match 28-19.

It’s only a “social game” when you lose. A few ice cold tinnies of Tsingtao after the match were a welcomed treat at the end of the working week and at the end of 60 solid minutes without subs.

Skipper Guillaume paid tribute to his players. “Some guys just didn’t try hard enough. I can only carry this team so far on my own. But we’ll look at the tapes and come back stronger in two weeks. Full credit to Tigers, they were younger, fitter, had subs and were playing at home. We should have won. Everybody knows that. Ask anyone.”