U15s rampant at Hammersmith & Fulham

Sunday 1st February 2009

Hammersmith and Fulham U15s 5 v Maidenhead U15s 55

Hammersmith and Fulham U15 A Maidenhead U 15 squad made their way into deepest west London for their first match ever match against Hammersmith & Fulham at Hurlingham Park (better known for polo!).

With a pitch in reasonably good condition pitch and a bitterly cold, strong crosswind, Maids immediately made their game intentions clear by winning the first scrum against the head, running the ball down the blindside allowing Rich Sullivan-Paul to score in the corner. Through more open play and unselfish running / good support work by many players, Maids had scored a further 3 tries within the first quarter by Iain Whiteford, Josh Edney and George Thomas.

With hooker Danny Keir dominant in winning strikes against the head and H&F obviously weak in the scrum, it was decided to go to uncontested scrums to try and balance out the play. Nevertheless a rampant Maids scored a further two tries via Rich Sullivan-Paul again and Leo Smith, with Fraser Brooks nearly adding to the total but tackled into touch inches short of the corner flag.

With several H&F players suffering at half time, Maids volunteered two players and both Rich Sullivan-Paul and Leo Smith unselfishly offered their services. H&F picked the pace up with their infusion of new blood and Leo Smith startled the complacent Maids backline with a quick burst of pace to break through some weak tackling and put H&F on the scoresheet. Rich nearly added to this with a fantastic break down the blindside but was valiantly tackled by Greg McHugh. Maids suddenly realised that their ex-players had changed the face of the game and started to apply pressure through the forwards with three tries in quick succession being scored by Simon Crosbie (captain for the day), Scott Gillan (his first try for Maids) and Iain Whiteford to snuff out any comeback thoughts by H&F. Iain Whiteford scored 5 conversions in difficult kicking conditions.

Man of the Match award goes jointly to Leo Smith and Rich for excellent performances for and against Maidenhead.

Squad: Josh Edney, Danny Keir, Hal Orchard, Calum Hull, Jacob Sanders, Tim Cronbach, Ben Scolari, Simon Crosbie, Rich Sullivan, Fraser Brooks, Iain Whiteford, Dhruv Surya, Leo Smith, Greg McHugh, Gareth Orwin, George Thomas and Scott Gillan.