Old Blues vs Merton

The Old Blues headed down the road to local rivals Merton in a bid to get the festive season underway with another win in their league campaign. Given that this fixture was taking place slap bang in the middle of Christmas party and flu season, there was always a risk that this mightn’t be the prettiest game to watch and that is certainly how the first half played out with the first 40 being a very scrappy affair with play moving from end to end and the Blues guilty of playing a lot of headless chicken stuff. First blood went to the Merton boys with a penalty kick and despite a very well taken try by the Old Blues, another well taken penalty saw the half time scoreboard reading 6-5 to the home team. Some harsh words at half time seemed to focus the minds and the Old Blues started the second half playing a more structured game. This began to pay off when a period of sustained pressure on the Merton line finished with an Old Blues try scored by Simon Bourke off the back of a 5m scrum. The Blues were steadily increasing their dominance and extended their lead when a penalty try was awarded against Merton after an excellent kick and chase left the Merton full back with little option but to hold on to the ball for dear life on his own try line. The result was sealed with a penalty from the ever reliable boot of Kobby and put beyond doubt when Mitty chipped over the Merton line, collected the ball (which landed perfectly) and ran in a cracking try with about 10mins to go. However, the Merton boys were not interested in watching the clock run out and launched an all out attack on the Blues line. The Blues defence held firm, even when down to 14 men for the final 5 mins after a “team yellow” (seriously, that’s what he said!) was awarded to skipper Stephen O’Shea. The final whistle went with the score reading 29-6 to the Old Blues. It wasn’t pretty but there were some bright moments and we have to be happy with the way we knuckled down in the second half to secure the result and especially with the way we defended to keep the Merton pack from going over our line. The HdM award went to me for some reason, possibly because DearO felt sorry for me freezing my ass off behind the posts for the final 5 minutes, but mainly because I’m feckin’ brilliant… SteveO.