Tabard 17 - 24 BERFC

Despite the torrential rain over the past 24 hours, the Tabard pitches had drained well, and so we approached our third league game of the season. With Fraser nursing a hip injury, and then discovering that Pav was on a trip to France, we’d shuffled our resources midweek and lined up fullback number 3 - only to discover that Miles was still suffering the effects of concussion sustained a fortnight earlier. A text late on Saturday revealed that Eddie had suffered a fractured wrist at school rugby, and Sunday morning dawned with another text, this time from Sajjad, unfit due to a knee injury sustained the previous day.

And so we found ourselves down to six fit backs. Never fear, Andreas is here! Straight out of the back row, into the fullback position, to do a fantastic job.

Tabard have been regular opponents over the years and since our days of playing on a full sized pitch have always had the upper hand, until earlier this season when we’d gained our first win over them. We knew they’d be fired up for this game, and they had several dangerous players in their back division – including their flame haired centre who’d been missing earlier on in the season.

The first fifteen minutes had Barnet camped in the Tabard 22 - but time after time we were repelled as the Tabard defence held firm – and they made good use of the boot to clear their lines. As the clocked ticked on, the Barnet coaches concern rose as we failed to turn domination into points – fearing that we needed to get some points on the board. Talking to some of the Tabard parents in the bar afterwards – their concern was that they couldn't get out of their own 22!

With 15 minutes on the clock, Barnet broke their duck, some good work in the forwards, Sam drove off the back of a ruck, and yards short of the line offloaded to Kadeem – unstoppable from that distance. 0-7.

Tabard struck back almost from the kick off, with a ruck down the left and the ball spun out wide for their winger to cross near the corner. A good kick levelled the scores 7-7.

Territorially, Barnet still had the upper hand, but the Tabard backs always looked threatening. Barnet then secured some good ball and ran through the phases – and finally managed to get the ball down the line, where Louis opened his legs and showed his class following up his brace from the previous week to put Barnet ahead 7-12.

Soon afterwards, further good work from the forwards in the Tabard 22 allowed Liam to dive over from 2 yards to increase our lead 7-17.

As the clock ticked on, Tabard came back once more – and with the Barnet coaches looking at their watches, with the last play of the half, Tabard scored a copybook try, with their left winger scoring once more in the corner to bring the half time score to 12-17.

Whilst politely questioning that we seemed to have played some additional time during which Tabard had scored, the referee was more than happy to show that his watch showed 34 mins 57 seconds. Unfortunately, we only play 30 mins each way. The referee was extremely apologetic – which was accepted as a genuine mistake.

Buoyed by their late try Tabard started the second half with their tails up – and made good inroads into the Barnet half, with their outside centre showing good speed and footwork to leave our players trailing in his wake. Having lost the Tabard left winger in the first half, Joel stuck to him to like glue in the second half and put in several good tackles to nullify that point of attack, but it was down the right wing that Tabard finally gained parity – to bring the score to 17-17 with ten minutes remaining.

Having made up ten points to draw level, Tabard now sensed victory but the Barnet boys dug in and began to stem the Tabard tide. A quick turnover put the ball once more in to the capable hands of Louis who outpaced the Tabard defence for a second time that day to restore our lead, 17-24.

There was time for one more strong run from Louis, which was halted metres from the Tabard line, but the final five minutes was played out in the Tabard 22 as Barnet refused to give up hard fought territory – and the ref blew right on 30 minutes to hand the boys a deserved victory.

Credit must go to Tabard for running us so close. The game was played throughout in the right spirit, and despite his unfortunate oversight in the first half, the referee was commended for the his performance.

Another really good performance – and despite losing five players in the run up, we still rolled out 20 players on the day – which just shows the strength in depth that we now have. There will be days
when players are missing, but to lose so many late on and have boys step up to the mark is great testament to the whole squad.

Once again, difficult to pick out a man of the match such was the squad contribution. Mentions in despatches for Louis H back from injury – that’s a brace two weeks in row, from a new position. In addition, the second half performance of Joel – shown a clean pair of heels in the first half – he nailed his man every single time in the second half. The comeback kid! And last but not least – to our stand in fullback – The Danish Destroyer – from number 7 to number 15 in the blink of an eye.

Well done the squad!