By Hillary Carr
November 21 2005

The Amateurs with two recent impressive wins under their belt took on Old Merchant Taylors who have improved significantly recently in another ‘must win’ game to sustain their challenge for the top of the Herts/Middx 1 league table. The opening minutes suggested that a week off from competitive matches did nothing for Quins’ concentration. As soon as OMTs launched an assault on the Quins’ line from the whistle they succeeded in notching up a try within 5 minutes from a rolling maul by one of their towering locks and a penalty soon after to establish an 8 point lead.

This gave Quins a needy wake-up call and they responded quickly. From a quick tap penalty, James Dewar raced away from the defence, offloading to Adam Wallace to burst through and score under the posts and for Donald Baines to convert to reduce the deficit to 7-8.

Quins soon switched into gear, and from winning a ruck on the OMT 22, stand-off Shaun Terrey chipped over the attacking defenders. The full back gathered the ball but spilled it after being tap-tackled, the ball ran kindly for Greg Birbeck who dribbled to the line and touched down ahead of the despairing dive of another defender. Baines again converted to put the Amateurs ahead 14-8.

Quins were in the ascendancy and OMTs were being stretched. Nick Wilcox who put in another first rate performance with his back row partners broke away from a maul and raced for the line to allow Baines to add another conversion and stretch the lead to a comfortable 21-8.

Quins looked to be cruising when Jon Fairweather took a short pass and sprinted away for the try line selling a perfect dummy to wrong-foot his opponent. More surprised than anyone else on the pitch to be in a scoring position, he just kept on running a la Forrest Gump right over the dead ball line to give OMTs a 22m drop out and deny himself the satisfaction of recording a great try.

3 minutes later Ben Fretwell suffered a severe shoulder injury from a rather benign tackle on his opposite winger which stopped the game for nearly 15 minutes while he was treated. Trying to get him to the sidelines, he twice fainted before being moved from the pitch. This delay did nothing for Quins who went off the boil and from the resumption of play allowed OMT to score a converted try to ease back the deficit to six points at 21-15.

The Amateurs were jolted back into action. From a maul 30 metres out, Luke Senior emerged with the ball to skilfully offload to Phil Thompson in support. He dashed unimpeded to the line and Baines again added the two points to push the Amateurs ahead by 28-15 at the half-time whistle.

The second half was a much more even affair where OMTs scored an early penalty after the restart to close the gap to 10 points before Luke Senior scored a try and Baines maintained his 100% success with the conversion.

Quins also got to grips with the line-outs that OMTs had been successfully disrupting, but continued to give away needless penalties which were often punished being driven back 30-40 yards by the OMT kicker and they scored a late consolation try to end the game 35-23.

1. Cooper 2. Camacho 3. Fairweather 4. Dewar 5. Knowles 6. Senior 7. Thompson 8. Wilcox 9. Wigginton 10. Terrey 11. Fretwell 12. Birbeck 13. Wallace 14. Baines 15. Ah-Sun 16. Williams 17. Jones 18. Jermy.

Quins scorers:
Tries: Wallace, Birbeck, Wilcox, Thompson, Senior. Conversions: Baines (5)

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