Mighty Manor roll over friendly foes.

Having now embraced my role as perennial benchwarmer for the team, the fantastic fours now has its first match report since the legendary Captain H20 left us, Mr Morton you are gone but not forgotten.
This weeks opponents were Gravesend Vs, our original foes Dagenham called off earlier in the week, so skipper Mike Cross arranged a friendly for us. It should be noted that he opted not to put his body on the line for us and instead worked on his tan lines in sunny Spain. Manor had a strong pool of players available this week including a few from the threes too, I'm guessing there were a few that wanted to work off some of the turkey over Christmas, I've barely got over my hangover from the Christmas jumper party myself.
Looking at Gravesend's side, they resembled a wily team with a few big runners, their second row in particular being an absolute monster.
The line up for the day was much the same as usual barring Gerbie who was making his return from suspension for us.
Captain for the day Luigi won the toss and elected to receive. This marked the first time we got to see the oppo's kicking, I think this was one of the only times it actually made more than 10 metres, for the rest of the match they were diabolical. At one point Gerbie even suggested to the poor bloke to face his own goalposts and try kicking that way which was a good tip to be fair. On one occasion we asked him to retake it, more so that we could have a good laugh I think.
As there were so many tries in the first half I won’t bother naming them all, players on the scoresheet included Disco Stu, Luigi via a sparrow dive and Gerbie (he was put in by a fantastic offload from yours truly, he only had four players left to beat so it was practically on a plate).
Having seen enough champagne rugby the ref blew for halftime and it gave us a chance to make some changes so that everyone could get some game time which is important at every level. Young Jack came on for his senior debut on the wing.
For a long time the second half remained scoreless, this is a testament to Gravesend's fighting spirit who to be fair did not pull out of any tackles once the game was over as a tie and they were maybe unlucky to not get on the scoresheet. They only had the one sub and this was quickly used up so thanks to James Sellek for making up the numbers, a few of the boys are glad they don't have to tackle you on a regular basis!
During this period Gerbie was bounced by the behemoth in the second row, after friendly encouragement from the sideline the next two ‘tackles’ he made involved him dumping the person who decided to run into him.
Jack got two tries on his debut and looked pretty good so we’d like to keep him for a little while please! I know someone else got one too but I can't remember at this point (I'd left my Joe 90 glasses in the changing room) and the ref granted mercy, bringing an end to the game at 62-0.
Pints were handed out to Jack and Paul Porter who picked up the dick of the day award for constantly moving left or right instead of forwards when asked to move inside the 5m line by the ref. This was likened to like watching a rhino line dance by one!

Thanks to Gravesend for turning up on short notice in the week and for the bottle of port they gave us after the game, we look forward to hopefully meeting you again and having a closer game of it.
Next week we travel to Rochford to see if we can repeat the good performance we put in at home earlier this year, and pick up some bonus away points which will help us in our quest to secure the historic triple double!