Saturday 1st September – Blaydon Bricks 26, West End 31

Management selection sees Bricks loose out in a close encounter….

Two key areas of focus for Brick’s training this week:

  1. Tackling Blaydon 1st team squad members….
  2. Learning to Breath, Run and Hold the ball, all at the same time…..

Big thanks to West End who turned up with 12 players for this friendly to start our season. It started well for the Bricks, who were 2 scores to 1 up and looking in command, although to be fair to West End, we were playing with 15 and West End 14 men, having loaned the Brick’s 2 Subs we had.

Selection of Photos:

thanks to Windy, the total 141 are on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/26086313@N08/albums/72157700961871105

The training was paying off with people getting around the park a bit more than usual and Arran broke the line twice and he managed to ‘run, hold the ball and breath’ to touch down between the posts.

You could tell it was the first game of the season, players were rusty and we should have had a number of additional scores, but people got isolated and lost the ball in contact or gave away needleless penalties, but that’s why our first game is always a friendly.

Good to see Savs back after missing a good part of last season with a neck injury.

A richness of front rows on display, with Brett, Keith, Paul, Steve P and Tom all available, with Tom playing for West in the first half.

We had a much changed back division and the new centre partnership of Damien A and Peter started to make inroads as the game developed and we went close to scoring a few times

Our half finished with us on the ascendancy and looking likely to score, until…… him not to be named (being nice to people as it was the 1st game of the season, it won’t last…) decided to take a drop goal after the referee had called last play, he’s lost all decision making privileges.

A Game of two half’s…..

All changed at halftime when some of our 2s returned from an aborted game at Westoe and Joe Melia went on as replacements for West. Joe has played many times for the Bricks and has progressed through to play a number of games for our 1s, with only his moving away for work, stopping him being a part of the squad last Saturday. So Joe did us some (clutching at straws here) favours with a fair amount of tackling practice on the day and little favour by still scoring 3 trys, which had the crowd calling for the manager’s head for such a decision. They were reminded the Bricks is not a democracy and they had no say in selection….

Management, what can you say – Bricks don’t play with uneven numbers, when teams turn out to play us short, Bricks needed game time together and forcing teams to play short is not in the spirit of our team, any issues, management Coup encouraged……. 😊

The game ended with the Bricks in the ascendancy again and very close to draw/win at the end when James was beaten to a touchdown by West defence.

So a close game, could have so easily been a win, but not to be, very good defence by West and good luck to them in the Northumberland Aln league this year, where they will face our Development team

Thanks also to James Murray, Sean Pyle, Andrew Steinberg and Adam Keeler who all came back to our side line and covered for injuries on both sides.

Scorer’s:

  • Trys: Arran 2, Shaun & James
  • Conv: Hopey 3

Thanks to; Tom Hirst, Craig Oliver, Joe Melia, Adam Keeler and Damien Shaw for playing for West End.

Next Bricks game: 15th September, League game away to Houghton Boars, who had a good win against Winlaton Saxons on Saturday.

Selection:
1. Paul
2. Keith
3. Brett (Tom)
4. Steve P (Andrew S)
5. Arran
6. Cameron
7. Jake Armstrong
8. Justin
9. Hopey
10. Savs (James)
11. Damien S (Craig O)
12. Damien A
13. Peter (Sean )
14. David G
15. Craig B