Exiles beat the weather to go top
Lots of spectators braved the foul weather to watch this top of the table clash for the Exiles against North Walsham Vikings. And they were not disappointed. Despite the wet ball the Exiles put on a powerful display which gave a youthful North Walsham side a tactical lesson. After opening wins of 120 and 150 points, few of the EC1N teams fancied playing against the Vikings, so they had only managed nine games all season. Clearly, far and away the best side in that part of the division, they did not have the experience to match the battle hardened Exiles who had played in the far more competitive Western section.
The game started with a cagey opening: lots of knock ons allowed the North Walsham pack to demonstrate their superiority in the scrums. For some reason, Brendan and Banksie seemed to swap positions at will, so Brendan won none against the head but won all his line outs. The North Walsham tactic was to kick to the Exiles back three, who started with a nightmare of a game, failing to catch cleanly, or having caught cleanly, releasing the ball forwards in the tackle. With the wind unusually coming from the Barton Road end of the ground, the Exiles maintained territory with some clever kicks from Banksie at fly half. (Or was it Brendan?)
The Exiles centre partnership of Jaco and Rijk were a constant menace to the defending North Walsham centres, who to give them their due, never allowed them through, but after ten minutes of being battered, you could see they knew the sort of game of which they were on the receiving end.
Eventually a ball had to stick and after some characteristic drives from the Exiles pack lead by Tall Guy Jake, Chabs, Jamari and Will the ball was moved left and Max at last caught and held a ball to go over in the corner and open the scoring. His difficult conversion just faded to the left of the post leaving the score at 5-0.
From the kick off the Exiles continued the power play. Alongside those mentioned earlier, Elie, Jules and Joe Johnston all contributed forward momentum, as did Brendan and Banksie (or at least one of the two.) A few cunning kicks through from the Cambridge half backs took the Exiles near to the Walsham line where repeated attempts to cross the whitewash were repulsed at the last minute. Eventually Young Alex, after keeping off the juice on Friday night for a change due to the importance of this match, and sleeping more than a couple of hours, came thundering in on a brilliant line, taking the ball at full tilt from Stef and piling into a couple of big Walsham forwards like an Exocet, taking them by surprise. (It never ceases to amaze how much power such a skinny lad can generate. He needs feeding up and he will be a great player further up the club. Maybe change the lager to Guinness?) Anyway, taking those forwards almost to the try line he set up another ruck and when the ball came free, Stef’s expert miss pass found Tall Guy lurking on the wing in Young Alex’s vacant spot, to score in the right hand corner. Again, Max’s difficult conversion just failed to find the posts, so the score had crept up to 10-0.
The Exiles continued to play to the same game pattern. Short soft passes from Stef and Brendan to hard carrying forwards and centres freeing up space to kick in behind where Young Alex, Joe J, Tall Guy and Chabs all pressured the Walsham back three. In contrast, the Walsham game plan was to spin long passes out to their fast young backs to knock on or to kick long to the Exiles back three where slower defence meant Cambridge had time to support their players. Eventually, the Walsham backs were isolated one too many times giving away a penalty in front of the posts for not releasing. Max took the kick to take the Exiles into a 13-0 lead.
At last the Walsham attack held a few passes, and playing a little shorter dragged the Exiles into giving away penalties. They pushed on and deep into the 22. Five metre line outs, five metre scrums and eventually after several picks and goes, all brilliantly defended, the Exiles won the turnover penalty and Stef kicked the ball dead for half time.
The second half looked like it might be more troublesome with the wind behind Walsham, so they were able to kick much longer and deeper, but the Exiles had compensated by bringing on Joe Roberts at full back whose hands proved much more reliable than Kieran’s had and Kieran moved to fly half to replace Banksie whose hammy was tight. Archie replaced Brendan at hooker and Dec came on for Jules. Just what Walsham were (not) looking for: three bigger, harder runners than those that had gone off! When Walsham had possession, those long passes were giving time for Rijk and Jaco to get up in defence really quickly and pressure the Vikings back line. Still they hadn’t learned the lesson of tactics in an attritional wintery game.
It now seemed that every Cambridge carry came with more metres made as the Walsham defence tired and the Exiles attack gained more energy. Eventually the power play from both sides erupted into lost tempers and Jamari had some red mist as the Walsham fifteen pushed and shoved Stef. Rushing in, he pushed the full back, earning a yellow card for his loss of temper. Down to fourteen and losing a prop, Max went off to be replaced by Cadge for ten minutes.
Conventional wisdom is that the team down to fourteen should lose seven points in that ten minutes. Here, the Exiles simply doubled their efforts and kept Walsham tied on their line. When Walsham turned the ball over or won a scrum, they kicked back and Joe R or Max just ran it straight back at them. The play didn’t move out of their 22 and the pressure told, Will being the one to cross the line for the Exiles third try. Kieran’s attempted ‘simple’ conversion didn’t make it so the score moved to 18-0 for the start of the final quarter. After a bit of a mare of a game, Daz took sympathy on Kieran and took him off, replacing him with Ace.
One try per quarter so far meant the Exiles were looking now for the fourth, bonus point try. Yet somehow Walsham held out. On one occasion, Jaco crossed the line and touched down, but the ref who had been very fair throughout the game couldn’t award the try despite requests to use a photo showing the clear grounding. Shortly afterwards, Stef inexplicably appeared to go for a drop goal, which he scuffed. It turned out that it was an attempted cross field kick. I’m not sure which would have been more embarrassing: having a cross field kick mistaken for a drop goal attempt, or going for a drop goal when the fourth try beckoned from continued short carries. As the final whistle neared, at last space was made out wide and Young Alex received a perfect pass in space which he inexplicably dropped. It was clearly just not to be!
So the game ended at 18-0. Every single Exiles player in the squad including Richard and Nick who once again didn’t get onto the field, deserved a massive pat on the back for a superb display of rugby in tough conditions. Mistakes were made, of course, no-one could expect not to knock on with such a slippery ball, but the carrying power, the speed of defence and the sheer bloody mindedness not to give anything away was super impressive.
It was great to hear from the North Walsham coaches that their boys had enjoyed their first properly competitive match of the season and we look forward to seeing them for the return fixture in April. They are a proper rugby side, young, fit, skilful and powerful, but on this day they were beaten by experience. We hope that somehow Eastern Counties can make the case for both sides to get promotion this year, as they both deserve it.
Scorers
Tries: Max, Tall Guy Jake, Will
Penalty: Max
Team
Jamari Dowdie Wright, Simon Banks, Elie Hammou, Will Ramply, Julian Mannion, Alex Chabala, Joe Johnston, Jake Prier, Stef Liebenberg, Brendan Burke, Max Burton, Jaco Enslin, Rijk Diepeveen, Alex Howard, Kieran Shave
Replacements: Archie Davison, David Cadwalladr, Declan Sully, Richard Just, Isa Sloot, Joe Roberts, Nick Apps
