The Manor III's embarked on a mini-tour to Whitstable. The game was as hard as the ground but the Manor came through this test as victors.
The early exchanges saw Whitstable dominate. Their cause aided by a strong wind. The pitch in large sections often exploded in great plumes of dust when a scrum or maul occurred. It was hard to see what was happening amongst it all and at times it somewhat resembled a scene from a western when a cowboy rides across the desert.
Nonetheless the Whitstable right Winger opened the scoring after Adam, myself and Tony Osborne misjudged where the touchline was. This may sound daft to you readers and Rugby experts, however Whitstable had recently re-marked their pitches, and the dead ball line of the neighbouring pitch was still visible/gouged into the pitch we were playing on. This resulted in their being two parallel lines. We thought we were sheparding the winger into touch and admittedly stopped short rather than making sure and tackling him - yet he kept going and rounded us to score the try and make us look like buffoons. We found out after that we are not the first team to have made this mistake and in fact Whitstable themselves have made this error also.
Us backs did redeem ourselves from the kick-off. We immediately won a line-out on the 22. Ralph Nocaro uncharacteristically playing at 10, characteristically boshed forward. Lovett picked up from the ruck and popped it wide and the three guilty parties for letting in the earlier try combined to let Adam go over for his first.
The game for the second week in succession (no doubt another victim of the hard ground) was disrupted for an injury. With Whitstable looking likely to score, Ralph brilliantly tackled the back-row player. The collision resulted the sort of high pitched scream associated with Ralph when chipping a finger nail. Remarkably it wasn't an injured Ralph wailing but the Whitstable player who was carted off in an ambulance with hurty ankle.
The half was cut short but it still allowed time for Whitstable to score. Using the wind they kicked ahead, Seb covered back, but rather than touch down he fancied himself as Christian Cullen or Serge Blanco and decided to run it out. He got smashed in a double tackle, spilt the ball and the Whitstable fly-half had the easiest try of the day. 14-10
A shocking start to the second half saw Whitstable score out wide especially considering the wind with the opposition pack maybe starting to tire. The Whitstable surge continued for a short period but the Manor pack were not going to let that happen for too much longer; especially with the introduction of fresh meat in the form of Keith and Simon. This reinvigorated the Manor.
With a solid platform, Ralph was able to cause plenty of damage to the Whitstable backs. The space created gave Adam a second chance to score but he almost made a mess of it by not noticing the try line. I think that if he were not tackled he may have tried to have score beyond the dead ball line. 21-17
The dynamic Ian Lovett then stole a Whitstable line out and plodded over to make the game very close. 21-22.
With 6 minutes left Manor attacked again. Ralph again created the opportunity and smashed forward and engaged 3 tacklers. This allowed Leoung to pick the ball up skip over the prone players and run free to the try line. 21-29.
Big thanks to Eugene for organising.
Gary D, Pete T, Rob S, Ian Welch, Eugene, Barry, Steve T, Ian Lovett (1), Jeff Bradley, Ralph Nocaro, Leoung (1) Tony, Adam (2), Seb, Matt.
Subs: Josh, Keith Munro, Simon Bottomly
Cheerleader: Paul Saunders.
Report: Matt Evans