Manor 3s win a great encounter against a strong harlow side!

Eton Manor 3s travelled up the m11 to nearby Harlow in a crucial league match. Eton Manor 3s have found themselves in a good run of late having won their last 3 games in a row so travelled in high spirits. Sadly due to injury they were lacking their captain, myself. Also Mad Sean was out (I think the ref was rather pleased when he noticed this!). Elsewhere there were usual injuries and terrible excuses given however manor still put together a strong 23 man squad. Manor gathered at the club nice and early for the meet only to find it all locked up. Sadly for the bar the moment they opened up we left.

Eventually the cars arrived with Jumbo and George Cast running their usual 10 minutes late and we made our way. On arrival we were greeted by the returning figure of South African throughbred Stefan De Jonge. Manor got changed and started their warm up by resident braai master and 3rd team manager, Werner. Werner claims he is the master of warm ups and no one gets injured when he gives warm up…Pete Thomas seems to not believe this theory and did his warm up in the changing room with some of his front row buddies. God knows what they get up to but it is worth mentioning they were last out the changing room after!!!

One final decision was to be made prior to kick off and that was who to captain this group of players. No Mad Sean, Stocky, USA, Tinky and Hollis meant the 3rd team were very young and it was left to the wise old head of George Cast to lead the team (Possibly the first time anyone has ever called George Wise!!).

The game kicked off and from the off it was evident this was a very strong harlow side. How on earth they are in the bottom half of the table is crazy considering the way they played and ability they had. Harlow played with structure of a much higher team with their forwards organized into pods and crisp hands resulting in phase after phase. Eventually Manors defence turned over the ball and Ginger ant trundled it up before passing it to Ginger billy who sprinted down the wing before releasing Keeny to score. Keeny seemed keen to bring back memories of his attempted try at maldon where he was tackled before the line and teased his chasers by slowing down (or in what was probably the truth ran out of breath!). Manor kept up their excellent defence before a huge effort by the manor forwards to win a scrum against the head resulted in George Cast charging forward before offloading to ben ward who broke a couple of tackles to score. Harlow then slowly found themselves back into the game to score 2 tries and a penalty to give themselves a 15-14 lead at half time.

Manor knew at half time that they were in a game. However looking around you could see that this team would not give up and would put everything in. Changes were made which included the return of manor legend Stefan at centre. Manor started well and it wasn’t long before the ball was worked wide to Charlie wood who carried through 3 would be tacklers and quick hands by Marin allowed harry to score on the wing. The game then fell into a mix of good manor defence, organized phases by harlow and some crunching runs, offloads and carries form manor. With 15 minutes on the clock manor lead by 4 and harlow raced through before Martin Boshoff produced the tackle of the day to save a try. Sadly in the tackle Martin had injured the harlow winger and was yellow carded. Despite this field position and numerical advantage harlow could not score and manors defence held firm. With a few minutes on the clock manor found themselves on the Harlow 22. The ball was slow and manor had many in the ruck. However David Ridewood had spotted something that no one had and he picked up the ball and banana kicked it over the defense and beat the cover to score a fabulous match winning try.

Final score Harlow 2s 15-26 Manor 3s.

A superb game to watch. Manor battled hard and showed great bottle to beat a strong harlow side. Manor 3s now have 4 wins on the trot and their season has most definitely started now! One of the strengths of manor was their youthful side however it would be harsh to discount the benefit that Sweet Pete, Porter, Riaan, Ben ward, Keeny, Stefan and Boshoff bring to the side!

Man of the match had a ride range of votes for; ryan, Luc, Ben, Stefan, David R, Jumbo and joel. But the winner was Young Charlie wood who on his second senior start had a big game in attack and defence.

Makowski moment was an interesting one this week in that no one had any mess ups. An excellent sign so no award was given. However Harry was the title after kicking the ball dead and getting the sole votes submitted!

Next week Manor 3s have a week off before another league clash against Basildon on the 30th at home