Fourth Fifteen First Fandabbydozy Foray

For their first outing of the season Leo’s relied on the old(ish) guard of regulars, welcomed back Simon Cz from his two season injury sabbatical, Newnsy from fatherhood and marriage, Rio Lennon, from his five year sojourn modelling for Ted Baker, and positioned Chris Tan out on the wing for his first game of rugby for 10 years. No one believed him when, on the long trek into South Yorkshire he claimed to have run the 100 metres in 10.7 seconds. Perhaps we were too sceptical.
Scotty once again stepped forward into the loose head birth and a new engine room of Newnsy and CJ (definitely GTI Turbo) settled in behind. Wath looked a little rugged up front, and pacy but naive in the backs. The game commenced and Leo’s set about pressurising the home side’s line. Forward bursts were well supported by the crabular Grant and laconic Si Cz who set the backs free with gay abandon at every opportunity. Scrummaging was competitive but good humoured with the Properee officiating sensibly. Greedy Gav opened the scoring with a cheeky blind after a good set from Si H and the pack. Then it was the turn of the backs where Phil “The Power” and Brittle Ben ran fast and true before setting up their wingmen. We soon realised that Chris Tan could actually run quite fast as he showed a clean pair of heels to the home defence on numerous occasions! Tries were scored at regular intervals as the visitors found space and speed despite the tenacious home tackling and the balmy conditions. Up front the line-outs we working well and the scrums were particularly combative as Wath competed across the field. Superior running lines from the visiting centres, supported by JP (occasionally) and the two wingers meant that Wath were regularly on the back foot, but never caved in.
At half time a call for sensible, slower Corinthian style rugger was requested by the aging loose-head as the result was assured and it was time to hone the skills and acclimatise to a new season. Less kicking away of good possession and position was also required as Leo’s knew they would come up against tougher opponents in the weeks ahead. Chris Fan completed a hat-trick, Billy scored yet again, as did Ben, shunning the inside option of supporting Scotty. Greedy Gav was then held up over the line after also shunning Scotty, (who was probably helping to hold him up) as the game became more open and the runners ran like runners do! A second forwards try came from Carl, whilst Phil The Power and Si Cz also touched down. Grumpy Scotty added six conversions to the 9 tries. Whilst the score line might suggest a pretty one sided contest the pack certainly knew they had been in a bit of a battle and Wath certainly deserved their score at the end.
The 4th XV are up and running, all the way to Selby for a Merrit League fixture.

Finally,a word from our captain CJ: A huge thanks to all of you who made the effort to come down to Wath on the weekend. It was great to have the 4s out and there was a great mixture of new and old faces. Scotty then took us to an upmarket wine bar-come-family brasserie possibly decorated by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen for a pint on the way home. For those of you who may be put off by such worrying developments I can confirm this will not happen again. Both contenders for line of the day come from Carl. The first, about 60 odd minutes in, was a desperate call of “come back!” after seeing the backs breaking the line out wide and realising he was going to have to run more than 10 yards. The winner for me though, was Carl teaching Billy how to scrum and telling him to “imagine he was like a chaise longue for the prop to put his arse on”. I have no idea where Leo’s reputation as a posh club comes from....