Mary’s sucked dry by vampires
The scene is set - one of the oldest rugby competition in the world and St. Mary’s are in the final, as they have been for the last twenty years (having won the thirteen of them). The crowd was hyped and in good voice for the match of the season for St. Mary’s, and their opponents Guy’s and St. Thomas’s. Mary’s didn’t seem too worried by the vampiric habits of the Guy’s players especially after the first match of the day, in which the Mary’s Thirds had beat the Guy’s Thirds in a closely fought 17-14. The match kicked off and Guy’s took an early lead with some consecutive penalty kicks, but fly-half Clifford pulled back with a penalty kick. The Guy’s fly-half took an amazing penalty kick from the halfway line with only a slight following wind to put them ahead by a margin of six again.
Half an hour into the match and Jim Platt scored a beautiful try set up by Simon Rogers in a constructive run which looked to have the Guy’s players floundering. Unfortunately the try was not converted. The match at this point was looking fairly even, but without any change to the score, until with a few minute remaining, the stronger looking Guys’ backs scored a try and converted it, shortly followed by a penalty kick. Half-time score to 22-11 to Guy’s.
The second half brought a tighter defence to both sides and for the most part the Marys’ side spent a lot of time in the Guys’ half, without being able to show anything for it, despite some good runs by Rogers and Elliot. After twenty-five minutes with no score change Guy’s scored (again with two penalty kicks in a couple of minutes).
Another Rogers run led to a flourish of rucks which were Mary’s dominated and so moving them from their own half deep into the Guy’s defence, but to no avail. The Mary’s players tried to keep their hopes up but with five minutes remaining they battled on. With a failed penalty kick from Guy’s, Mary’s touched down the ball, which led to a scrum, where there was a Guy’s try, but there was no conversion. Full-time, and the blood-bound Guy’s team had won. In all the match had a great buzz about it, and in particular it seemed that great attention had gone by Mary’s into practising their line-outs, as Tremelling won a vast majority of line-outs for them. Mary’s may not have won it this time, but will be back next year in the final as they have won the event twenty-nine times in it’s 122 year history.
StMRFC 11 - 33 Guy’s Hospita
