Brave 2nd XV Come Up Short

Watford travelled up to Enfield with 14 players, this went quickly down to 13 when Hilly realised he hadn’t recovered from his career ending injury from Letchworth the week before. Watford were determined to not let this become a game of numbers and set out to keep the game tight and turn it into an arm wrestle.
Enfield took quick advantage of their superior numbers out wide however, they spread the ball wide and managed to finish off in the corner. Their kicker added the extras and Watford were down by 7. Things then went from bad to worse for Watford as stand in 10 Jacob predictably went off after 10 minutes leaving Pie’s army further depleted with 12 men. A backline reshuffle resulted with Yates at 10 (after all he had one training session playing 10 a couple of weeks back) and Andrew limped from flanker to 12.
Enfield soon stretched their lead with their winger showing impressive pace to beat the cover defence and jog round under the posts, Watford now down 3 players, 14 points and 25 minutes gone. With the remaining Watford players beginning to feel the pace, Enfield scored again through their fullback, the whooping when stepping one Watford player was unnecessary and seemed to resolve the Watford defence. So much so that skipper Pie threw himself head first into everything and eventually had to go off with a head injury. Yates finding himself in even more unfamiliar territory now being asked to cover his injured comrade as skipper.
With Watford down to 11 and Enfield up by 19, Enfield then decided to drop 2 of their players to even it up a bit. Watford controlled the rest of the game and really should have scored when Yates made a break, soon followed by Godfrey being bundled into touch after a classic Watford line out move five metres out.
The 2nd half carried on as the 1st half finished, for 20 minutes Watford camped in the Enfield half but not managing to finish off all their hard work. Ben, who had been impressive with ball in hand all afternoon, took a bang to the head and was unable to continue. The referee decided he had seen enough Watford players filling the ‘subs’ bench and called the game at 60 minutes.
Motm – Andrew – tireless work from the flanker turned centre, ran hard and tackled everything.
Debut – impressive debut from scrum half Ciaran who was sensibly asked to cover kicking duties and did so well, barring one attempted cross field called by Godfrey (who apparently had the pace to make it, but of course in reality didn’t).