Manor 2s go down fighting.....literally

It’s never nice when you go to National 2 side Southend to play their 3rd team only to find out that their 2nd team game got cancelled that morning. All you can do it hope that they stick to the spirit of the league and still play their 3rd team. Sadly this wasn’t the case.
Eton Manor were down quite a few players for this game so ended up fielding a number of debutents and 17 year olds in the backs. But the pack looked quite good so we were still hopeful of a victory.
The warm up went well and we were ready for KO.

After the 1st 10 minutes its was obvious to any Eton Manor supporter that this wasn’t Southend’s third team. Their patterns of play were good, they were fast, strong and had a good understanding of the game.They completely dominated the game with Eton Manor defending non stop but we just couldn’t get our hands on the ball. This was not a team that had won 4 and lost 5 that’s for sure.

In the end the pressure from Southend started to create the odd gap and they went in for 2 tries.

On one of the rear occassions Eton Manor did get the ball Riaan Shields broke clean through and got stopped just short of the line, the ball was quickly recycled and before Southend could reorganise their defence Craig was over for his try.
There were also two successful penalties in a hard fought first half. The score was 19 – 13 to Southend at half time.

The second half got tougher for Eton manor as they received two yellow cards. It was in both these 14 man spells that southend breached the tired Eton Manor defence to go 31 – 13 up.
The second half turned into a more aggressive game with the Southend back line verbally taunting the Manor backs. With the referree warning them constantly but doing nothing else about it in the end the punches started getting thrown by both sides and a bit of a brawl erupted which spilled out on to the side of the pitch. The referee could see that both teams wanted to carry on the fighting so called the game off with 5 mins still to go.

Final score Southend 31 Eton Manor 13

Southend have some very talented players in their side. But if that was their third team then I am Ghandi, they were miles better than any team we have come up against this year. They totally dominated most areas of the game but what I believe the scoreline does show is the dog and spirit that this Eton Manor side has. They never gave up and went down fighting to the last second of the game.

As for Southend rugby club they have lost any respect I may have had for them. I have not heard verbal goading like that for many a year and would be ashamed if my players acted like that whenever they scored. Their behaviour was more accustomed to a football pitch rather than a rugby pitch.
Their supporters weren’t much better either with one classy mum calling us F…ing C..ts every 10 minutes. Yet with sly punches being thrown everywhere all you could hear was chants of “typical Manor”.

I spoke to the referee in the bar after the game and he said that he was told by Southend RFC that the game he was reffing today was Southend 2nd team vs Eton Manor 2nd team. He had no idea we should have been playing their 3rd team instead.

But the quote of the day came from one of their talented players after the game. When asked how many ringers did southend honestly have in the end, his reply was only 3. We all looked back in amazement and said just 3, are you sure? He said I swear to you mate, only 3 players in this side play for the first team, everyone else is definitely a second team player. To which we pointed out to him that we were meant to play Southend third team not their seconds. He went very quite and just walked off.

Congratulations to Southend for producing a truely excellent second team, but next time can you put you third team out against us please.