After a small break for refreshment, and a touch of pre-season, Newsteam is back online to bring you all the news and views fresh(ish) from the field at Fortress Hughenden and beyond. For our first installment, a quick round-up of pre-season with a considerable dollop of Hillhead/Jordanhill 1XV v Dumfries in farfarawayland.
Pre-season, what I have seen of it at least, has been a bit…flat. A fair turn out sometimes, plenty variety, definitely challenging, but missing something. There seemed to be, from the sidelines, a lack of fire, competition, drive…Pre-season isn’t there to be ambled through…but, it is over, and we are into the league now, so any changes’ll have t be made on the hoof. The pace picked up over the friendlies in the last few weeks, with a reportedly epic trip to Inverness doing wonders for team bonding…mostly, and the boys were looking not bad a Dalziel last week, and seemed fired up for Dumfries.
So off we trundled down the motorway: the beautiful, if slightly saft, backs’ bus, and the rough and tumble chaos of the forwards’. Slow and steady wins the race and the backs soon found themselves out in front as Grant played bish-bash-bosh with an Audi, and Captain safety regaled us with tales of the time he once almost reached the speed limit…said “creative driving” from a certain forwards’ coach nearly saw a set of luminous rucking shields littering the road, but the backs took charge and all was solved. We took the scenic route to the rugby ground, via a nice church and a chunk of river, encompassing almost none of the directions we’d been given. The forwards on the other hand, not wanting to rock the boat followed the directions and arrived mere minutes before us.
Warm-up was good, good intensity, everyone seemed switched on, the pace definitely quickened and the heads up after a good week at training. For a full match report, courtesy of Mitchell Snr, complete with entirely fictional scoring system, see the main webpage, for an assortment of in between bits, read on…
Some points, the presence of David back at 9, most definitely NOT looking like an excited little puppy, made a massive difference from last week, with better interplay, and more decisive go forward ball, Fanny McCulloch made himself known in his regular spot at stand-off [ed- "big fanny, as usual, at 10" might scan better?] and Angels had a few good runs out of position on the wing, Fireman Stu showed a bit of form, but still has more to come so we hopes…the scrum was a bit of a riot, not helped by the Ref, a bit of creative running(on somebody’s head)saw their 12 sin-binned, and Hills capitalised on their man advantage, to go some points to less points up at half time.
There were a few solid performances, nothing spectacular, on this account chosen one of the week has been withheld. Coach Keith has his hands firmly in his pockets, no thumbs-ups handed out yet. Ladies choice for the week was Marty Lane with his sticky-mitt hands in the line-out and some good support and interplay with the backs.
The view from the sidelines saw quite a crowd in the stand, a number of lovely WAGs in attendance. Lifeguards were in attendance when a replacement front row had to be rescued from a puddle of his own drool as he was found sitting with his back to the game, gazing up into the stand. Newsteam was a little bit sick in their mouth at the sight of Mitchell Snr, glasses teetering on the tip of his nose, eyebrows cutting all kinds of shapes, enlisting the help of some lovely ladies with the finer details for his match report.
There was a little tension on the sidelines with some poor attitude on display, Quarters thrown aside, dummies spat, toys out the pram and all that. Words will, no doubt, be had.
Post match, a special mention to birthday boy Kenny Brown, for being beautiful…and to Vinny, awarded man of the match by their coach, and polishing off his winners pint for a double victory for Hills.
Post-post match there were some car-park hijinx seeing Keithy’s misdemeanours punished with a fineage game of Higher or lower, the boys fine pot expanded, coach agrees he got off lightly, poor Kenny on the other hand, was far from amused with his fine, but Fanny McC got the cash out of him, then out came the gaffer tape…
Hazzy and Longwell just can’t get enough of each other, and to save them having to fight for a seat next to each other on the bus they were taped together, which lead to some distressing sights at the pee-stops…Gus, who has managed to drag his birthday out for the entire month, was lulled into a false sense of security on the backs bus, where he was made to down half a low-sugar bacardi breezer and a shot of tropical sourz, come pee-stop he was kidnapped by the forwards, Captain Stu taped a can to each hand and Gus was left in the capable hands of the Hills front 8…from there I can’t comment, I haven’t seen him since. Methinks maybe next August will be spent in hiding…
No time for more, fun was had at Lebowski’s, then on to Rosey’s, Newsteam bailed early.
Howe of Fife come to Hughenden on Sat, with a coaches BBQ after, on account of the glorious weather, be there or be square. Later skaters.
To be continued…
