Mavericks and The Mud Bath

Hello and happy Sunday to all our Mavericks.
Well, where to begin? You cannot possibly talk about any game yesterday without paying special thanks to the mighty weather gods that thought it appropriate to start the day with a nice mix of hail, sleet and driving rain and of course the howling gale. The howling gale was of particular benefit though as it stopped Andy Smith, or anyone else , from kicking the ball away. Just to add the final nail in the coffin those very same gods decided that this was the week we were to play in the barren , windswept flatlands of North Liverpool with a jolly trip out to Crosby St Mary's for our second fixture of the season against the Old St Mary's boys .
We arrived at the ground , well when I say ground I mean a random field and port cabin in the middle of farmer Giles's lower field , I half expected to see Ted fixing the fence (fast show reference ..... See what I did there ). anyway I digress, we arrived at their ground with the windscreen wipers on the car operating on full power , headlights on and the duelling banjos on the stereo, looking forward to what was surely to be an abandoned game, but oh no , game on !!
Mavericks took to the field battling to stay upright against the elements and subsequently lost the toss.
Captain Tim gathered the troops and after a few words regarding abandoning any idea of open free flowing rugby and to adopt the principles of English rugby of old and sticking the ball up the jumper and see what we could do, We kicked off into the force ten. The Crosby full back took the ball and with the first kick of the game pinned us back down on our own five yard line , ok so this was the game plan , from the resulting line out we took the ball and stuck it up the jumper and proceeded to walk Crosby back to the half way line, with Neil, Willow and Benno sniping round the fringes we managed to get back into the Crosby twenty two. Where we stayed for the next ten minutes or so.
The game was following a similar pattern as we attacked and they repelled , despite our absolute forward domination we just couldn't break through what was proving to be a scrappy, yet resilient defence . Crosby were unable to offer much as an attacking threat and as a result it appeared that the first half an hour was spent rolling around in the mud, and water between the half way line and the opposition twenty two.
A breakthrough occurred on the half hour mark when persistent forward domination created an opening for captain Tim to pick up and drive over the line 5-0 to the Mavericks, the less said about the conversion the better , other than it had nothing to do with ability just the wind was so violent above about five foot from the ground no kicking of and reasonable height was possible.
Half time came and went with the Mavericks still 5-0 to the good, we now had the wind in our favour and as a result could get some decent territory . It didn't take long to increase the score with Neil scoring from a dominant driven scrum close to the line, then Les Wildman , who for me gave a man of the match performance, tackling well,ripping fantastic ball from maul and scoring a try from a physical confrontation close to the line . Our final try scorer of the day was Willow who, following in his dads footsteps, got injured as soon as he scored . To be fair it was a forty yard sprint to the line beating three cover tacklers in the process of scoring under pressure , so I'll let him off the limp and leaving the pitch to allow super sub Pickard onto the pitch. The final score of 20-0 to the Mavericks was a fair reflection of the days activities, definitely not a game for the spectators , no free flowing rugby , more a game of attritional mud slinging and hard graft .
A few things of note from this week , once again Benno demonstrated versatility, cleaning up in the line out and scoring a nice little kick and chase try which was for some reason ruled "no try" by the referee , Nev and Les double teaming for another try which once again was ruled "no try" by the ref despite the ref immediately giving us the put in from the resulting scrum .... Confused ??????
A particular note should be given to Dom who lasted the full 80 , am sure he should get some kind of certificate for that one. Thanks as well to all the backs who spent a lot of the time standing in the open on a freezing cold pitch whilst the forwards moved slowly from one twenty two to another.
A good day all round , roll on the spring when by all accounts we should get some snow to keep us warm.
Thanks to Benji and all the guys at Crosby St Mary's for hosting us.

Thanks guys and see you next time ,

Captain Tim