OBs 41 Ivel Barbarians 0

"These are the voyages of the OBs Under 15s. Its 2014 mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilisations; to boldly go where no man has gone before." - Captain A. Christie

And so we ended up in Yeovil, beyond the Shepton Mallet galaxy, to play the Ivel Barbarians, the warrior Klingons of south Somerset.

In the 21st Century, OBs are a member of the United Federation of Rugby Clubs, a peaceful alliance of democratic clubs that runs a ‘Starfleet’ of vessels to patrol the final frontier of the game, beyond the Somerset levels, where sat navs dont work so well and places like Melbury Bubb still have a village pub that do lock ins.

One such starship is the Captained by Andrew T Christie, a courageous and unflinchingly noble commander with an eye for the ladies; first officer Mr Charlie D Spock, a half-human half-Mancunian with pointed ears, arched eyebrows and a philosophy based on pure logic; Chief Medical Officer Sam‘Tayz' Taylor, who has his own special way of fixing people and Chief Engineer Matty 'Potts' Potter , an old-fashioned nuts and bolts man from the team engine room, devoted to knocking the stuffing out of the opposition . We were also pleased to welcome a new crew member Aki, who can run at warp factor 10.

As well as encountering strange and incredible alien races ( Hucclecote ) uncanny space phenomena ( that exists between the ears of most of the squad at some stage in the season) , time travel and universal threats to life ( no phone signal beyond Whitchurch ) as we know it, this crew of pioneers also has to deal with the scheming Romulans of Gloucestershire who threaten to destroy the chances of OBs winning the Cup

GAME 1
So on a day of cold horizontal rain the brave pioneers against a full Klingon team
Result : 10 - 0 in 20 minutes
Scorers : Dan 'Sulu' Thurston and Capt. Andrew T Christie

While the opposition tackled aggressively and tried to get into the game they were always on the back foot as the crew created space ( not through the Yeovil wormhole) but by drawing the man and releasing perfectly timed passes. We had some of our ball turned over when crew members got isolated which is a lesson we must learn from. Our scrummage was dominant and special mention to the front 5 for regularly driving back their opposition.

GAME 2
We then took on another set of Klingons who had just seen their colleagues soundly defeated by Capt. Christie's loyal crew and their heads dropped fast. The team cut through the opposition like a Phaser through a steel door and at the end of the game the retreating Klingons were all teleported to the lunch queue knowing they had been soundly defeated by the trusty crew of the Starship OBs.

Result : 31-0 in 20 minutes
Scorers : Dan 'Sulu' Thurston x 2 , Capt. Andrew T Christie, Chief Medical Officer Sam‘Tayz' Taylor and Oli 'Mr Chekov' Martindale.
Conversions : Matt 'Uhura' Dillistone x 3 - yes Uhura was a woman who ran communications, but she went through a Zorgon time-warp in series 4 and became a man, as any Treckie will tell you. So that's ok.

On a serious note it was another very dominant performance by the squad. They are not the finished article yet , not far off mind, but as every game develops they are getting there.
There is no doubt that when they play a team of similar skill, fitness and desire to win, each squad player will deliver their performance of the season.

Once again the lads played the game in the right spirit as the Head Coach of Ivel Barbarians was pleased to communicate in his email to us after the game

"Can i thank you, players and coaches for coming down and playing. We know what we need to work on and hopefully we made you feel the same. Your captain was/is a credit as are your players for the team and club. It was good to ref and made me think of my positioning during the game.
Thanks for helping us out with Bridport players coming on it was appreciated considering the weather conditions."