Longlevens RFC

Saturday’s game marked the first home game of the season for Longlevens MAR which was against Walcot Warriors. Training recently has been disrupted due to a mixture of frozen and flood training pitches, which did show in parts of the game. As agreed before the match, the game would be 60 minutes, split into 3. The game also marked the 50 appearance for Longlevens MAR by Saul Cowley. He is the first person to reach this milestone and put in a man of a match performance to match.

Walcot kicked off, however the ball went straight into touch leading to a Longlevens scrum on half way. From the resulting scrum, the backs used one of the moves they have been working in training to break the defensive line, and make their way into the 22. After a few scrums, Jez Wilson made a small break, passed to Jordan Rankinwoodhouse who went over for the first score of the game. Reece Joyner with the conversion, bringing the score to 7-0 in the first 5 minutes.

After the kick off, the ball was knocked on by Longlevens, leading to a scrum for Walcot. For next 5 minutes Walcot were camped in the Longlevens half down ill-discipline from Longlevens, giving multiple penalties away, however they were not able to capitalise on this. Longlevens managed to get the ball back and after a break down the wing by debutant, Alex Wade, drew in the fullback and passed the ball to Connor Scantlebury to run in under the posts for Longlevens 2nd try. Reece got the conversion, score now 14-0. At the end of the first third, the score was 14-0. After a few injuries to Walcot, Longlevens provided a few players to them to help cover these injuries, one of these was Jez Wilson, who was a constant menace for Walcot in the final third, which was frustrating for the players but a credit to Jez for not changing his game despite playing for the other team.

At the start of the second third, Longlevens had multiple opportunities to increase the score however due to a couple of knock on’s or bad passes, the finishing touch was missing. After a penalty was given away by Longlevens, Walcot made a break in the middle of the pitch through Morgan (who was voted Man of the Match due to always being a threat on the ball) who went through and scored, conversion successful. Score was now 14-7 to Longlevens. After this try, Walcot started coming into the game more and more, which lead to Longlevens when they had the ball to try and rush the play which lead to the ball being dropped or the passes not going to hand. Finally after some good attacking play, Rich Morris took the ball, went past a couple of players to go in and score. Reece with another conversion, score now 21-7, which was the score at the end of the second third.

In the final third, Longlevens started to click again, with the ball going wide often which caused Walcot more and more problems, but due to good defence Longlevens were unable to break them down. Longlevens thought that they nearly had their 4th try when Paul Watson gathered a kick ran down the touch line, passed back inside to Rich Morris who in turned passed it back to Paul to score in the corner, however earlier in the move, Paul’s foot was on the line, meaning the try was disallowed. The rest of the half the game went back and forth but no one could break through the defence. In the final play of the game, the Walcot fly half, attempted a drop goal, which was successful.

Final score was 21-10 to Longlevens MAR.

It was a great game, with things to work on in training before our next game against Cardiff on 19th February. Looking forward to travelling down to Walcot in March for the return fixture.

Man of the Match: Longlevens voted for Morgan for Walcot due to his running game and a constant threat going forward. Walcot voted for 50 Cap Saul Cowley, who was always willing to take the ball and making yards each time he made a run.

Special mention: Alex Wade who made his debut and was always a threat when he got the ball. Thank you to the Longlevens’ boy’s who helped Walcot out when injuries came into play. Thank you Andy Nicholls (who played majority of the game for Walcot), Jez Wilson, Ryan Ponting and Alex Wade for helping out in the final third.