An early kick off to accommodate the England game off saw Watford Seconds travel over to local rivals Old Albanians to take on the Grizzlies (OA's 4s). Unfortunately, much like Eddie Jones’ boys, it wasn’t to be our day.
After an error strewn opening 10 minutes from both teams, OA's capitalised after initially being held up by the Watford pack. The OA's 10 crash over from the resulting scrum.
Some more scrappy play followed and OA's were over again, after a missed knock on allowed the OA’s winger to dive over in the corner.
OA’s third was a nicely worked try, from a turnover scrum they moved the ball wide to the winger who stepped over for a score.
Watford finally woke up after this and a 22 drop out from Keelan Tullett was gathered superbly by Joe Clancy. The ball was then worked to the left hand side of the pitch where it was popped out to Adam Hancock. Hancock tipped the ball on to Meredith who gave an out the back pass to Luke Bees who moved it quickly on to the looping Tullett who fed Pie. Pie then galloped his way to the try line, riding a tackle in the process.
Watford were nearly in again before the break after a nice move saw PJ Harriot offload to Meredith, but Meredith’s pass didn’t go to hand and the chance went begging.
Half time:
OA’s 19 Watford 5
Rallied from their late first half score, Watford started the second half well. They were nearly over through Richard Yates but a good cover tackle saw him spill the ball as he tried to offload. However Yatesy redeemed himself moments later with a splendid try in the corner, a poor clearance from OA’s centre Stuart Williams, saw Clancy run the ball back and pass to Sean Silver, who drew the defender and popped to Yates to score. Clancy missed the subsequent conversion.
Then the rain came tumbling down.
The rest of the second half consisted of scrums, scrums and more scrums. With a few lineouts thrown in for good measure. The main highlight was a monster hit from Adam Hancock on the OA’s flanker, see the second half video on the website from 8:50 to see it!
OA’s eventually got their bonus point try in the last play of the game to round off a good performance from them, having had one denied by Hancock, who stripped their 9 over the line.
Final score:
OA’s 26 Watford 10