By Hillary Carr
November 2 2005

The tide has turned… So it would seem by the way the Amateurs ground out a hard-fought but well-deserved victory over top-of-the-table opponents Chiswick in Herts/Middx Division 1. 

The Amateurs’ first visit to the Riverside ground surprised Chiswick and their supporters who were expecting to add another scalp in their impressive start in the league. But Quins continued where they left off from their superb performance in last week’s crushing defeat of Old Millhillians at The Stoop and played much more cohesively as a team. The confidence was evident right from the start. In the loose play that has until now suffered from lack of support or turnover of the ball, Quins secured and retained clean possession and put Chiswick on the back foot at the breakdown. 

In the set pieces, Quins controlled their own scrum and often regained possession by wheeling the Chiswick pack whereas in the line-outs both teams varied their patterns of play and honours were relatively even. The Amateurs had slightly greater possession and territorial advantage in the first half, but neither side managed to score as the Amateurs’ defence closed down any moves and forced Chiswick into handling errors or wayward passes. The biggest upset for Quins was having James Dewar sin-binned a second before the half-time whistle.

Despite being a man short, the same confidence continued to exude throughout the Amateurs from the restart. Ten minutes into the second half Chiswick went down to fourteen players themselves as one of their flankers was shown the yellow card. With the numerical advantage after the return of Dewar, the Quins backs ran a superb pattern of decoy runners creating the space for Adam Wallace to cut straight through the heart of the Chiswick defence and score near the posts. Dewar added the two points for the conversion.

Chiswick were stung, and very visibly. They pressed hard to restore parity and nine minutes later the Quins defence was disorganised following a tap penalty allowing Chiswick to score in the right hand corner, but failing with the conversion to trail 5-7.

Quins might have been expected to concede at this point, but they didn’t yield an inch. Lee Rose came on for Andy Lawrence to reinforce the front row, Donald Baines replaced Adam Wallace in the centre and Chris Hugall came on to the wing. By now the Amateurs’ pack was expertly driving up the side of rucks and the rolling maul to great advantage, and was also reliably solid in defence. The constant pressure in the Chiswick half finally told when Quins recovered the ball from a maul, the backs broke left and Shaun Terrey rolled off his opponent to touch down in the corner. 

The last five minutes were frenetic for Chiswick, but Quins continued to hustle them, to slow the game down and force them into mistakes. The exuberance shown by Quins that greeted the final whistle was understandable, both teams having contributed to a great game of rugby but with the Amateurs deserved winners by 5 points to12. To highlight particular individuals would be unfair in what was a great all-round team performance. Long may this trend continue.

1. Lawrence 2. Glanville 3. Fairweather 4. Dewar 5. Knowles 6. Thompson 7. Camacho 8. Wilcox 9. Wigginton 10. Terrey 11. Birbeck 12. Hurst 13. Wallace 14. Fretwell 15. Ah-Sun 16. Baines 17. Rose 18. Hugall

Quins scorers: Tries: Wallace, Terrey. Conversion: Dewar

 

Harlequin Amateurs is extremely grateful for the sponsorship and support of PSL, Telcap, Hero and HOPA members.