Bradwall Road’s largest crowd of the week basked in winter sunshine to witness one of the rugby events of the year. Skill, athleticism, finesse, and class were just some of the words that were not employed to describe the occasion.

The match started with a celebrity kick-off which was expertly performed by our chairman, Robin Astles. Sadly, however, Robin was cruelly tackled by our new Irish member Mr G. Ravity and, in a routine that would have made the Chuckle Brothers proud, removed from the field upon a stretcher.

The four quarters that followed were nothing if not entertaining. It would be invidious to single out individuals for either praise or criticism; so here goes:
• Mat “The Ferry” Dolan; rolled on an off the field frequently and Zebrugge was mentioned when a scoring pass was dropped.

• Woody Barlow; showing-off by side-stepping septuagenarians.

• All the U15s coaches, with the exception of Nick “The Haka” Joyce who melted into the background muttering “there’s enough of them; they don’t need us.” It will take a long time for the looks of abject disappointment, upon the cherubic faces of the 30 boys that stayed to watch them, to be erased from your correspondent’s memory!

• Dave Perkins, at the age of 71, made more tackles in 40 minutes than Pete Clarke has pints of Guinness on an average weekend. Those of you who know Pete will recognise the enormity of this feat. This has to be balanced, however, by reports of disgraceful foul play in the ruck area (“the rules have changed” is no excuse is it Pembo?) and the fact that reports are that this particular gene has been passed-down to “offside George” of our current under 11s!

All in all, the 54 – 41 draw seemed a fair result and the men of the match, “Vinnie” and the aforementioned Dave Perkins were deserving of their awards.

It was great to see more than 50 players pretending to be keen to take to the field and let us hope that this will become an annual event. How about Sunday December the 18th 2016?

C.F.B. Dixon

Sandbach RUFC

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