X-Men win battle of the Somme

The pilgrims arrived at Gatwick, some having taken refreshment for the long journey at Victoria whilst others arrived early to shake their thirst.
The flight was uneventful apart from the management ensuring the trolley did not get past them before we had to land.
We arrived at the hotel (which was very accommodating and looked after us very well) and agreed to have a quick meeting where we agreed that everyone would be sensible, have a couple of quiet drinks and be off to bed relatively early.
That agreed, the management walked down to the 1st XV’s hotel to see Jamie. Schoolboy error! Management had a complete sense of humour failure as the children stayed out way beyond their bedtime.
Next morning we prepared for 12pm kick off so that we could all watch the 1st Team game. Management still had a charisma bypass as they walked up to the pitch and were met with a somewhat wet scene. We agreed to tie ropes to Joe Birch as he was the most likely to drown and started the warm up. Eerily, despite alcohol, lack of sleep and a local tsunami on the pitch before we arrived, the team started to look quite comfortable.
We won the toss and opted to play into the deep end first. The Guernsey boys were bigger and we thought we were going to be in trouble at scrum and maul time, given the conditions. As it turned out, we played the conditions well, not trying to many long passes and running straight lines as it would be impossible to change direction on this pitch. Our scrum held and we scored a very good try from a driving maul following a lineout. Scores by Dan Gilling, James Catlin, Ben Hennah and Bradley Kayton led to a 22 0 half time score, and the reason I am not mentioning any individual performances is simply because everyone was playing very well (despite the preparation!). Management were starting to thaw.
The second half kicked off but we decided to have a rest for a while, the only negative as this is something we seem to do but should not be doing. Guernsey kept playing and pushed us on several occasions throughout the game, with a very good openside leading their charges. However, one of the best facets of our game was our defence. We were not going to let Guernsey score and, with a mixture of blitz, drift, scramble and backstroke defence we kept them out. This was epitomised by one Guernsey attack where it was suddenly a 3 v 1. Bradley Kayton made the first tackle, got up, made the second tackle then got up and held on to the third defender long enough for the cavalry to build a raft and row across. We then turned the ball over and Josh Maybank suddenly broke down the left wing, making 25 metres and clearing our lines. This was then followed by Josh Maybank being sick, although he claimed it was a whack to stomach rather than Jagerbombs! Jamie Taylor was sick out of sympathy and the game carried on.
In between these defensive heroics we attacked. We changed the point of attack well, picked some good straight lines as agreed, and were scoring tries at regular intervals. Joe Simpson led the backs well and all of the forwards carried the ball well and tackled themselves to a standstill.
In all, Joe Simpson, Ben Hennah, Paul Ashby and Bradley Kayton scored second half tries with some serious jug avoidance by Joe Simpson and Ben Hennah (who was told separately by both his mother and his father to stay away from Roy Maybank!).
The ref (who had a good game) blew the whistle to end the game with the score standing at 58 – 0. The score suggest that this was a good team versus a poor team, but this is not the case. As I said earlier, Guernsey kept playing and worked hard throughout the game, but they were up against a team who were only marginally short of being superb given the very difficult pitch conditions.
A tremendous team effort, but if I have to give a man of the match award it would have to go to Mark Nimmo.

Match reporter - Roy Maybank