The result yesterday was disappointing, but once again the lads gave their all, we are learning harsh lessons along the way, but I would argue with anyone who says we haven't been competitive in any of our games so far this season. Massive difference between this season and last, every mistake, missed tackle or bad decision gets punished in some form or other.

The general lack of front rows due to injury, work commitments and/or various other reasons is putting a big strain on the lads that are playing, a massive thank you yesterday goes to Mike Potter, who at 12.30pm stepped in and travelled to LSH to play for us, he scrummaged well, put in a few big tackles and genuinely gave his all for the team, without players like Mike, the club would be a poorer place, once again thank you.

As I said earlier, we competed well yesterday, we made some bad decisions, we fell off a fair few tackles and we lost in the first ten minutes our influential captain, Kris has been one of our stand out players so far this season, tackles, line breaks, bad hair cut (same barber as Nath) and leadership, he will be missed with what appears to be a nasty shoulder injury. At half time we were 10-3 up and maybe LSH were lucky to have 15 men still on the pitch, if the referee had seen their full back take DJ's head off as he was clean through, they wouldn't have had a full team.

The second half started badly, three LSH tries as they punished our every missed tackle and mistake, came in quick succession, losing Spots influence at this time didn't help (another old fart with a hamstring injury), what's going on in training. Another club stalwart in Chris Wells found himself in the back row all the time he was on the pitch yesterday, as he said " I play wherever I'm needed" but our shortage of forwards took its toll. We dominated in the scrum, won the majority of our own line out and competed well at ruck time, a great performance by a hastily assembled pack.

The last twenty minutes belonged to the lads, LSH had two men sin binned for continuous infringements, we scored a try, Chris McGowan got held up over the line and Cal Graham got the try that never was.

Duck of the Day went to Dylan O'Dowd, worked himself to a standstill, tackle well, turned over ball at ruck time and was an absolute pain in the arse if you were a LSH player. Great game mate.

Now we come to the Diffy Duck and after his performance yesterday, there was only one candidate, his grounding of the ball on the LSH 5 metre line for what HE thought was a try ( he was convinced the referee had awarded it, didn't have the heart to tell him he'd given a penalty) means he gets a crate in for the lads to go with the Brookesy owes and maybe next week me and Al might even get a bottle, 18 players and 2 managers equals 20 ( Ben you skinflint.)

Plenty of positives from yesterday and a game against my ex School Old Boys next week, onwards and upwards.

COUILLES du CANARDS
Mother Duck.