Termites win at a canter despite crocked Crook

There are certain inevitabilities in this life: the sun will rise; speedy removal of roadkill from around the Rush Green junction of the A10; and your favourite team of mediocre athletes turning up and doing a job on the opposition.

In a rearranged fixture there was much movement before a ball was kicked with Andrew Offord doing his best hokey-kokey impression and players dropping out of the 2nd XV - they may have heard that Church was sitting next to them on the bus - resulting in multiple re-hashes of the team sheet from Captain Gawthorne whilst enjoying his Friday night karaoke refreshments. He loves the admin.

Right from the outset it was clear that the Blackhorse-Datchworth boys would be up against it. The return of Jack Humphries to the front row - following a spell on the sidelines honing his WhatsApp barbs - spelled trouble for the opposition tight five with muckers Hollis and Van Der Ryst putting the hammer down from the first scrum.

Further set piece dominance ensued with little known newcomer Chris Joannou causing havoc on the oppositions ball. (He might have a future at the club that fella). Excellent territory game as ever from Dave Albon - made even more impressive given our team run through was delayed 10 minutes whilst he had his tackling ankle strapped up by the multi talented Captain - resulted in your boys getting into the right area of the field, and determined Blackhorse breakdown work was all that kept Hertford out on a number of occasions. Gawthorne Jnr deserves a mention at this point for his own manful work at the breakdown maintaining Termites territorial advantage.

First score of the match went to Hertford’s 6 stone Manu Tuilagi in the 13 shirt, Donovan arcing round defenders after some lovely handling by Flaherty. Much jubilation from the growing crowd.

Scintillating play from the Hertford boys resulted in another score down the wing for Pernod connoisseur Ernie Hunt. Who successfully avoided a hat trick on his return to the side after car troubles last week, which will catch up with him eventually; I make it a quadruple when he becomes legally eligible for the shaker.

Now I’m also fairly sure Jacob O’Leary scored a free flowing backs move from a set play but to be quite honest at this point I’d spent a lot of time pushing in what felt like a thousand scrums so insert your own metaphor here pretty running great well done.

Hump continued to get through plenty of work and had a short range effort chalked off by the ref, though there was perhaps some cause to believe he did actually ground it. Before a pushover for rookie Joannou from the base. (Congrats to the big boys) Hollis enjoyed this one he took exception to the opposition tight head and told him he was the “s***test rugby player he’s ever seen”; don’t worry son he said that last week as well.

Another man who’s built like a tight head prop, Hertford scrum half Ellis Roberts, was lethal from the base. Exceptional pace showed a clean pair of heels to his opponent, cementing a thoroughly impressive half from the Termites.

It got no easier up front for the Black Horse lads with fan favourites plastic South African Ewan Thomas and basketball shorts clad Californian Heltsey cranking up the pressure, allowing fellow substitute Marcus “Slade” to cut a delicious line and score from the resulting scrum. Now I have seen video footage of this score and I will say I think it must have been slowed down significantly because this felt like liquid rugby from where I was stood.

Unfortunate moments followed when Matt Crook’s afternoon was ended prematurely with a rather nasty injury. He was significantly harder than I would have been (Matt's comment: "gas and air with a cigarette works wonders") and was said to have been more upset at the severing of his HRFC sock than the dislocated ankle. GoFundMe link to follow.

In addition to the dislocation, Matt ruptured some tendons and broke his fibula. He had an operation on Sunday morning, and will be in a cast for 6-8 weeks.

At this point the Black Horse team got wise to Termites set piece mastery and counteracted it by running everything. Which got them back into the game with a score and changed the momentum of much of the second half. There will be some sore bodies amongst the Horse players with significant shots going in from Ireland’s finest Scully, Humphries who was still mad about his try being disallowed and Heltsey with his trademark of really making someone regret running straight at him.

Hertford scored another through club stalwart Ben Griffiths turning back the years and successfully avoiding either concussion or the naughty step to canter in for a glorious finish.

Excellent carrying and offloading from Ryan Heywood freed up O’Leary who scored a beauty down the right wing to raucous cheering from the crowd which had doubled in size now the ambulance crew had turned up for Crooky.

Your boys scored again at the death some bloody handsome fella scored a screamer from halfway side stepped the fullback and made him cry. Or something like that.

MOTM was obviously Joannou. You could have picked it from the team sheet or when he said “In”. Turns out he can still do it with no warm up and no protein shake.

Humphries
Hollis
Van der Ryst
Roe
Scully
Heywood
Gawthorne
Joannou
Roberts
Albon
Flaherty
Gawthorne
Donovan
O’Leary
Hunt

Heltsey
Thomas
Crook
Griffiths
Adams

By Luke Roe the bloody screamer dentist