London French 1^st XV – Watford (56-0)Â

Sad as I am to hear that the 2^nd team has been knocked out of their title pursuit following a hard fought match against Wasps, the London French can find some comfort in the fact that the 1^st team scored 10 tries at home against Watford and kept a clean sheet as well! This point difference (56-0) may prove critical as we reach the final stages of our title pursuit, as we now find ourselves still level on league points with Pinner, but with an 86 point difference advantage (see league table here).

We knew that Watford had been struggling throughout the season, but our previous victory over them (0-20) warned us that they surely would not be a push over… but that’s when they had more than 15 players to play with! Indeed, our opposition showed up with only 14 players, and were therefore going to struggle. I won’t go into the details of every single try, but the match started very strongly with the French finding the try-line after just 4 minutes gone, off of a scrum in their 22 we’d managed to turn around, Olivier at number 8 finding a boulevard in the blind side as our 1-man-down opposition had chosen not to cover the wing (thanks for the good call, Berenger!).

3 tries followed in the rest of the first half, and an additional 6 in the second half, as the team remained concentrated in our race for points. Despite an agitated and clever 10, who used his kicking very effectively to gain ground, Watford never really managed to threaten our try line. They did hurt us though, forcing many early substitutions as Chris Kelly went off with hamstring injury within 10 min, Oli with a similar injury had to be taken off at half time, and finally Dalby with a bruised knee made it so that we actually finished the match at 14 either side, with uncontested scrums (their lock suffered blows on both shoulders, Robin having unleashed 5 weeks of accumulated no-game frustration onto him, I believe).

I was a bit frustrated throughout the game to see that every single one of us tried to make the difference at every occasion, at the expense of simple contact rugby – how many times have I shouted “take the ball in”! But when there is so much space, the temptations is too great I guess. This was therefore not an ideal way to work on our set pieces ahead of our last 2 important games! But a satisfying win anyway, so all in all, well done boys!

Man of the Match: Robin Cunningham with a number of good steals and powerful runs showed us why we missed him throughout February.

Dick of the Day: I don’t think I have a choice but to nominate myself for pathetically trying to kick the ball not once, but twice! … and knocking the ball on over the try line, once again… God is it painful to write this! … but it’s only fair I guess, given the amount of cr*p I’ve gotten for these at the pub, from the ref included!!

Try scorers (I hope I got these right): Olivier Delpon (3), Erwan Gouraud (2), James Vivian (1), James Dalby (1), Robin Cunningham (1), Cyril Gatinot (1), Tsz (1)

… and finally a special mention to Malachy for a great come back after many months of absence! We’d love to see you around more