25 July 2010
Perth-Bayswater first grade again lost a close game to fourth-placed Palmyra, 39-38 at Tompkins Park. The team did exceptionally well to build up a big score and led by 16 points with 15 minutes remaining. They let it slip away however and Palmyra came home to undeservedly steal the game with a penalty on full time. This young team is showing some real ability to build scores against teams in the top half of the table but must focus on playing 80 minutes of rugby.
In other games, second grade went down heavily to Palmyra 50-17, third grade lost to Palmyra 41-5, fourth grade lost to Palmyra 18-12, Under 20s defeated Palmyra 40-17 and Under 18s defeated Palmyra 26-19. The women's team scraped home against the Uni girls 76-0.
Filthy Fourths stumbled badly on their way to the finals by going down to a very committed Palmyra side 1812 at Tompkins Park last Saturday. Lucky for us that our closest rival for fourth spot, Cott, went down to Kalamunda so we are still clinging on to a finals berth by the skin off our teeth. If we want to contest this year's finals we need to match our rhetoric off the field with a more committed effort on it.
The match got underway on a lovely sunny day by the waters of Melville. Things were evenly matched at the start with the bounce of the ball the only difference between the teams. This bounce of the ball came into play when a Paly kick was allowed to bounce by the Perth defence. Unfortunately the bounce of the ball fell straight into the arms of a very athletic Paly chaser who then dotted down in the corner. It was five zip to Paly and Perth were stunned. From the restart Perth came alive and a huge, damaging run by Cliff "Man Boobs” Mataseni was finished off nicely by Barney McGoon. This was converted by Shane "Barr Fridge" and we were back in front 7–5. Paly put the heat on from the restart but Handsome Danny Vella decided that he would give the crowd (Pete and Kelvin Westaway) a thrill by making a break up the sideline from his own 22 before offloading it to his support inside the Paly half. The ball was quickly swept to the other side of the field where DWayne “The Train” Barr hit the pass at full steam to sail into the corner. What a fantastic try and I’d rate it as one of the team’s best in resent years. Unfortunately the conversion went wide but we were ahead 12–5. Paly kept coming and even through Winston and The Fridge tried hard to bury a few attackers in their tracks we started to get on the wrong side of the ref and penalties started to mount against us. Now I don’t normally criticise the ref in my reports but unfortunately Barney our ref for the day started to get a few wrong starting from a poor call on the Fridge who hit the Paly centre in a nicely timed tackle only to be penalised for no arms in the hit (even the Paly players said after the game they saw arm in the tackle). Poor calls like that can start to change the game and the poor calls kept coming. We got pinged for every little infringement while Paly was allowed to crawl around on their hands and knees stealing Perth ball in the rucks etc. I don’t mind too much if refs make mistakes at this level but I do mind if one side cops them all, which was the case in this game. Our scrum was coming under increased pressure and just before half time we were caught out down the blindside from a scrum by Paly. A missed tackle ( yes I put my hand up for that one) by a surprised Perth defence and Paly was in to score a try right on half time. Perth 12 Paly 10 at the break.
The second half saw not much improvement in our scrums, giving Dan Buist a tough day at the office. We even started to lose some throws into the lineout so it didn’t look good. Again we got penalised every time we started to build some momentum while our opponents seemed to be immune. Paly managed to score another unconverted try and a penalty kick to move to an 18–12 lead. This lead would have been more had it not been for the ever-present defence of The Train who constantly made that last ditch tackle preventing at least a couple of certain tries. We kept trying and were almost rewarded with a try to Chris “Nurse” Roberts who was seagulling on the wing. Chris weaved and bashed his way towards the line only to be brought down just short. A big charge at the line by Alema again just ended short while an unmarked Russell and Roger standing left of a ruck near the line went unnoticed. Shane Barr also made some telling breaks in the midfield only for the ball to go to ground before we could really capitalise on it. We were left stranded on 12 points, hard on attack but out of time. Paly deserved their win in the end and seem a good bunch of blokes to share a beer with after a game. We need to now look at how committed we are to playing finals rugby this year because another performance like that will cost us our season.