The Archers - beaten but unbowed

The Remembrance Day game always holds a special place in my heart and none more so than this year when I was honoured to lay the wreath on behalf of the supporters. The simple ceremony allows thousands of individual remembrances to share the same space in one perfect minutes silence. A moving tribute.

Then on to the game and another ridiculously young Saints team took to the field against an experienced Nottingham side who brought their “A” game to the pitch.

Controlled by former Saint Matty Arden at 10 Nottingham looked confident and capable whlst the Saints boys looked more and more like rabbits in the headlights.

Nottingham pretty much had it all their own way scoring first through hooker Dickinson. There was a brief glimmer of hope as skipper for the day Angus Scott-Young crossed for an unconverted try but then it was one way traffic as The Archers (apparently not just an everyday story of country folk) ran in three more tries and three conversion to go in for half time leading 26-5.

Strangley, I wasn’t worried. My thoughts at this point was if they could just stick to their processes then the youngsters would find a way to claw it back.

And so it came to pass. The first try came after Tom Lichfield had been used as a dummy runner allowing George Makepeace-Cubitt to time his pass to perfection for debutant Toby Cousins to score with his first touch of the ball.

Archie McParland, called up for England A this week and still only 19,  not only helped secure the ball at the breakdown but also scampered nearly half the length of the pitch to score. The safe hands of replacement Archie Benson and then Gavin Thornbury providing the passes which gave the youngster space. George M-C converted.

Saints bonus point try came from another piece of fly half skill that we have seen a lot of down The Gardens – a perfectly weighted cross field kick. It found Fyn Brown, another youngster who has impressed during this cup campaign, lurking on the wing and with no-one home he simply reached out and grounded the ball. GM-C converted.

But the respite was short lived as Matty Arden slotted a penalty and Nottingham were back ahead. Saints hooker Craig Wright had other ideas, however. His skipper punched some holes up through the centre and Wright took it upon himself to charge from outside his 22 through the Nottingham defence traffic to jubilantly score.

Saints held on for their 2 point lead for ten minutes and withstood Nottingham’s pressure in attack. The youngsters did well to finally win the breakdown and kick the ball clear for a hard fought W.

It says much about the spirit of this squad that they were able to carve out a victory despite the overwhelming youth and inexperience on the pitch. The youngsters –average of the 23 was 22.43 – will have learned more from the ground out victory than if they had won at a canter.

Next week is a rest week then the Premiership Cup continues with an away fixture at Coventry. It will be an interesting clash.

Pictures, as ever provided by Claire Jones at Redhat Photo. More can be found here. And to listen to Claire and Lis talk about things Saintly and other rugby stuff find LadiesWotPod on Youtube, Spotify or other podcast platforms. For Facebook chat about Saints take a look at Saints Sinners group.

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