Bricks secure win on new top pitch against a good Rockcliff Vikings side

Saturday 5th December – Blaydon Bricks 11 – Rockcliff IIs 0

Firsts on the new top pitch:
• Try – Joe Snowdon
• Penalties  – forget who got the 2
• Yellow cards – Angry man Stu Reay
• howling outrages drop over the line – Lowsey

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Scorers
Try: Joe

penalties: Lowsey 2

lowesy asked me to pint out that Joe missed a conversion and divers missed a penalty, doesn’t change the fact he dropped the ball though….

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Bricks unfortunately lost the planned league fixture against Houghton Boars who failed to raise a full side, let’s hope they recover that position soon. That’s the 3rd league game we’ve had postponed this season and we are losing ground on our target of 2nd place finish in the league, recognising we won’t catch Northern, there’ve beaten us twice and have a 9 point lead and won’t lose many, if any games this season, we need to get some league games in soon..

We picked up Rockcliff Vikings, who we hadn’t played for a couple seasons from the league above us, they agreed to come through and turned up with a young quick side, having recruited a number of players from Northumbria University, game on.

With the Bricks still in an injury crisis it was a welcome return to a couple of players; Cliff who had been out through injury for a number of weeks (and was contemplating retirement, but Claire sent him back to play) and Davy Hall who had been out, well forever really, following back surgery a good few years ago, only a rugby player’s logic would work this way; haven fallen down a set of stairs and landing at the bottom without damaging his back, he decided what more could rugby do to it, so he returned.

The other good thing was we finally got our top pitch back and with it, a side line of hecklers; Tommy, Aaron, Wardy, Russ, Micky Jackson, etc. the craic/support/sarcasm was great and back to the good days of watching Bricks home games. The wind was nasty but the trees provided good shelter for a good entertaining game of rugby.

Our forwards were dominant in the set piece and with Stu and Divers in the back row and we had pace in the backs to cover across the pitch and thankfully Vikings didn’t seem to want to throw the ball away from the forwards and go wide.

Highlights of the game:
• Lowsey and Matt gave Vikings a hard time with some strong runs through the middle
• Divers made good breaks from backrow
• Joe’s was a well taken try, just as well as he had a 2 man overlap
• Lowsey following up on Divers break, took ball on, got tackled just short, but, close enough to reach the try line AND then dropped the ball putting it down
• Stu Reay got yellow carded – for being Mr Angry, again
• Matt got through a game, post-game update, he fractured his wrist and is out for around 8 weeks
• Davy Hall makes a come back, he privately shares ‘he felt as weak as a kitten’, my response Kittens/Cubs into Lions do grow.
• Cliffy returns
• Grumpy’s return – must be shortest in history – injured in seconds
• Goggle found the club and played

Anth, what can you say, at one point he was found lying at the management feet on the side line, while playing, you just can’t teach that type of ability, (hopefully😉) at another, he picked the biggest guy on the pitch and tried to run through him, instead of going round him, can’t wait for next week…. Him playing saves me making funny things up for the match report.
This week sees us travel to Medicals Serpents in the league which will be another hard encounter, with our Development just beating Medicals 2s last week.

Bruce

1. Paul
2. Keith (Grumpy)
3. Brett
4. Steve Sewell
5. Cliff
6. Divers
7. Stu B (Davy Hall – YES )
8. Windy
9. Stu R (Stu B)
10. Joe
11. Anth
12. Lowsey
13. Matt
14. Damien
15. Goggle