Manor 3s battle past Braintree

After manor’s original opponents, Rochford, mysteriously pulled out late Friday night good work from fixtures sec, Andy Morton meant that our league game for next week away to Braintree got moved forward. Manor knew that this would be a massive test with Braintree having beaten top of the table, rochford last week. After Braintree 1s pulled out the league last week manor knew this would be a much stronger team they would come up against than last time.

With a few 3rd team regulars missing manor were reinforced by some of the old guard. Returning to the side were; Riaan, Dave, Angelo and Cushy. Playing for the first time in quite some time were Brunny, Steve Wright, Steve tee and the Blane Mckie. Manor still fielded numerous youngsters in their team (so that the old boys could have a rest once in a while).

The day started well with almost everyone turning up on time. After Riaan decided to drive into traffic the remaining 5 of us were forced to squeeze into Cushys car. 5 minutes later we came across Riaan driving next to us with a great big smile on his face and an empty car..Eventually we arrived and manor found themselves in 2 changing rooms with somehow the youngsters all congregating and the oldies in the other. The exception of this was (oldest player on the team this week) Werner who somehow decided to use the youngsters changing room!

Manor’s warm up was well led by Riaan and a strong, gnarly (and in places, old) Manor team started the game. Immediately Manor took the initiative and played the phases well with the manor forwards dominating. Big ball carries from Franny, Angelo and the rest of the pack brought manor deep inside the Braintree 22. After some very good phases Blane (in his first game for 3 years) ran an excellent line to score a very good try. Braintree seemed a bit shocked and didn't really know what had hit them. From the restart a huge carry from Damore knocked Braintree back again and after many more good phases, Dave Dennis (Yes Dave Dennis) scored a try from short range after good work from Steve T.

Braintree finally picked up their game and brought their pacy backs into play. After some good work they scored a well worked try. However this didn't put manor off and using the wing advantage they pilled pressure on the Braintree defence. A good change of attack from the backs resulted in bobby cruising in down the left hand side before shortly after Brad run a simple switch to score a good powerful try. Manor pushed on to half time and the forwards continued to cause Braintree problems before Dave Dennis scored a second try….(no we couldn't believe it either when it happened).

At half time manor knew the game would be a lot harder with the wind in braintree’s favour. Changes were made and Rhys and cushy had a good moan as usual. The game kicked off and manor continued their good rugby however the final pass didn’t quite work. Playing too much rugby in their own half manor gifted Braintree a well finished try. The game ebbed and flowed a bit with neither team making much headway aside from the occasional break. Eventually Braintree got a bit too nigily and it all boiled over a bit. As the game grew on manor threw on the changes. Braintree continued to attack however couldn't break down the manor defence until the last play when some rather bizarre referring allowed Braintree a penalty which they burrowed over.

Final score Manor 3s- 33- 21 Braintree 2s.

A really good game. Manor stepped their game up big time to match the talented Braintree team. Braintree caused manor problems and played well but struggled to have an answer for the talented midfield trio of Cushy, Blane and Damore and manor’s pack. Manor’s youngsters also came to the fore upping their game to match the old boys of the team.

Humerous moments included; Paul porter mentioning about a thousand times he had been to the gym that week, Steve Tee getting injured in the warm up and then miraculously recovering, Tony Armstrong having a huge moan at the pack to give good ball to franny only to forget franny had just gone off, Blane after 10 minutes of the game announcing he was completely knackered, Werner having a good game, Steve Wright for managing to not miss any tackles (well he didn’t make any either but lets not make too big a point over that) and the tiny Braintree winger for trying to start a fight with Franny.

There were a lot of good performance this week. Worthy of a mention were Sam for impressive all round work, Franny for some big charges up the pitch, Harry Bone, Dave Dennis for scoring two tries and Blane who was excellent from start to finish. But the winner of this weeks man of the match goes to Riaan who had a really good all round game (probably because he had such a quiet and relaxed drive to the game).

Manor’s next league game is against old Brentwoods 2s on 22nd March at home.