OB's sneak through after the mulled wine magic start wears off

This was not a match to write a match report on! Many shenanigans in organising with Rob Hamblett and his skills saving the day as the OB Vets count for this match amounted to a pitiful 6 in number, but with the help of the 2s, we got there in the end (which is more than can be said of Forest who was a no show and even now, 24 hours later, I've had no word from...)

We arrived in deepest Somerset to be taken agonisingly close to the manicured perfection of some of Millfield's pitches to find the oppo mowing our pitch, and the world's highest crossbars. When we had (mistakenly in my opinion) called off the game against these boys at Failand in January due to a bit of rain, they had mentioned that they "hadn't realised we had a professional pitch" and I now realised why as theirs is a proper rugby club with a field surrounded by farmland, a changing room which is a basic shed with showers, no real lines or posts on the pitch and a clubhouse which is the local pub where they were founded 40 years ago! Put simply, I adored it and I am fairly sure that all OB's did! The welcoming mulled wine was perfection too...we then rather foolishly vaguely warmed up and Ted pulled his hamstring (but gallantly decided to play so we called lots of dummy scissors to the point where at the end Spotty hadn't even noticed he was unable to run!). We also unwisely poked fun at the ref's boots - he was a local farmer called Harry in clothes wearing his gun boots!

We eventually kicked off with 14 after the oppo lent us a prop - who would fast become known as superprop as he was brilliant - and the first quarter was bonkers as clearly fuelled by the mulled wine we raced into a huge lead faster than Whittle into a freshers night in La Rocca! We at one stage seemed to be scoring at will, with Hambo racing in for a hatrick on his wing, and Youll and Coughlan both getting one too...we played some great stuff with Ettsy and Slammy Davies Jnr - our two back row - dominating the field, and the half backs (combined age of almost 90!) pulling the strings...I think a few of us started looking at each other as if to say, is this really happening as we found ourselves 0-34 up within 20 minutes!

The oppo changed their team around and started to dominate up front in the scrums in particular, and brought on some of their younger ex Millfield boys and with that came a drop in our intensity and we started to not compete in the loose so well, and drop off a couple of tackles, and before we knew it - punctuated only by a 4th Hambo try against the run of play - we were down to 33-39 and into the last 10 mins! Even a vintage double covering tackle from Dan Evans wasn't able to halt the momentum, that was totally with the oppo and fortunately we dug deep and it was the ex 1st team skipper who scored the try that halted the comeback, with Hooper and Spotty combining to get the fonically challenged one over the line...Hambo added a 5th with the final play of the game and we shook hands on a winning but hugely enjoyable encounter!

Enormous thanks to Butleigh RFC and we look forward to return fixtures for many years to come as we enjoyed your hospitality, and thoroughly enjoyed the rugby too!