No Laughing Matter ....

It was 11.30 pm on Saturday night that I drove out to collect Nikki from a party and found that there had been rather a lot of rain - in places the A505 was underwater. Quite a lot of water, actually - above the Mondeo's headlights in a few places. Nevertheless, when Simon rang on Sunday morning to query the state of our pitches, I confidentally told him that they would be alright ... though I did drive to the club to make sure. Indeed, at 10am, the pitches were in a good condition with no standing water on them and the surface was (relatively) firm. Certainly a lot better than the car park which was, as usual, sporting several wide and rather deep puddles!

The rest of the morning was dry with a moderate wind so all looked to be set fair for the first Thames Valley league games to be played at Letchworth. Our visitors on Sunday were Bucks Jesters who we had played - and lost to - at Chesham a few weeks ago in truly awful wind and rain (see "Soaking Sunday"). It will be no surprise to anyone (certainly not to anyone who was there or has looked at the pictures below) that the wind and rain returned just in time for the matches to start ...... so again the games were played in conditions more appropriate for water polo than rugby.

A shortage of Bucks Jesters props meant that the U18s game had to be played with uncontested scrums throughout. The first half of the match was a keenly contested, evenly balanced affair with Jesters taking an early lead through an unconverted try and Letchworth Saracens responding with a neat backs move that put Chloe over near the posts and an 80 metre breakaway try down the left wing by Claire who also converted both of them. With the score at 14-5 in the home teams favour, and the conditions worsening by the minute, the visitors responded magnificently to keep the home defence under pressure and force errors in the slippery conditions. The pressure told and Jesters hacked the ball through to score two more tries before half time and turn round leading by 14-19.

The second half saw Letchworth Saracens raise their game but, in trying to exert pressure on the Jesters defence, a few errors occured which cost them dear when Jesters broke away to score 3 more tries before the final whistle.

Jesters were rightly proud of their 14-40 victory but for the home side it was No Laughing Matter ...!

Result

Letchworth Saracens U18s 14 v. 40 Bucks Jesters U18s

Scorers

Tries : Chloe, Claire

Conversions : Claire (2)