Imperial 2nd XV 20 - 7 UCL 3rd XV

On Wednesday, freshers discovered the pleasure of taking public transport to Fortress Harlington for our second game of the season. It was nice to see that the other team actually showed up on time after the 40-minute game last week. After a quick but intense and serious warm-up, strong motivation came for the banned players who wanted a last win with the boys to end their season. This meant Imperial came firing in the first 20 minutes of the game with strong carries and a dominant scrum regularly shoving back UCL’s. Yet, it wasn’t enough to score due to small handling errors and lack of patience in the opposition 22s. But quick thinking and true flair on the blind-side from scrum half Valerio meant that 2XV veteran Ifan was over the line unscathed for the first try of the game. Unfortunately, errors in defence lead to a scrappy try by UCL shortly after. The boys kept their heads up because we knew that if we played to system we would end up steam-rolling them with our fitness and flair.

Second try of the game came very handy just before half time as McConkey dove over the try line after a sick inside ball from Kirrane. Second half began just as the first half did and after a couple phases it was decided to take the 3 points to ensure the victory. After the successful kick on the restart, the ball went wide very quickly, and fresh prop ED (@debesh) believed for a moment that he was Rieko Ioane and tore the defence apart with a filthy step before offering the try to Sochi who ran the perfect support line. The end of the game was very scrappy but Jespersen proved to us once again what he’s capable of. After breaking a couple tackles down the touch line with pure pace and strength, he went on to forget his captain RDB on the inside for what would have been a definitive try therefore denying him a meat pie on his last appearance of the year. Thankfully, fines were awarded for this incident. Final score was 20-7 with IC 2s continuing their sublime form despite moving up a league in what should be a very exciting year once again. On a more personal note, I would like to thank all the boys for the unbelievable effort in the past two games, it was a pleasure to lead you guys and I’ll be back next year with you for more flair and big Ws.