Snowy Romania and A League success
The Forecast for the weekends game against Timisoara Saracens always looked like it was going to be a cold one. But no one could have even imagined how much snow they were going to have. We flew from Birmingham into Romania on Friday morning to find a rather grey and cold look to the place. We ventured from the hotel to the 25’000 seater stadium to do our team run and final prep for the game on Saturday. Towards the end of the team run, when goal kickers were kicking and the forwards were doing line outs the snow came. When I say came, it threw it down relentlessly for the next 24 hours. I. Have never seen so much snow in such a short space of time, there was easily a foot and a half of snow. Still the pitch was supposed to be fine as they had people working on it and shovelling snow. Well when we turned up to the ground, there was probably 1/8 of the pitch that didn’t have snow and it was falling faster than people could move it. They were fighting a lost battle. The game was called off and we were given a 28-0 try bonus win. We managed to get an early flight back home so we all headed to the airport in hope that our plane would be fine to take off. Boy were we wrong. We boarded our plane, and 7 hours later we still had not moved an inch. The ‘tug’ that was supposed to come and push us onto the run way got stuck in the snow and they asked the players to try and get it out. We tried and tried but it would not budge at all, maybe it was best to come back tomorrow and try again. Thankfully when we got back the following afternoon, a lot of the snow had been moved and we were able to take off. The trip to Romania ended up being the nightmare trip that you could only make a story about. Although we were all rather annoyed, I think one day we will be able to laugh about it. I mean how many times can you say you’ve had a snowball fight on a runway?
Monday night came around and thankfully there was a game in the A league, which the majority of boys who were meant to play on Saturday featured in. We welcome Worcester to the gardens and put on a good show for the supporters. Our ball retention was much better and we scored some good tries off our set piece launch. It was nice to see the likes of Tom Collins return from injury and have a solid 40. It was also good to see Matt Worley flying down the win as he secured a hatrick. We ran out comfortable winners as the score line suggested but we still had to work for it. We left quite a few opportunities out there and taking those opportunities is something we need to work on for Friday night against Worcesters first team. It is back to the premiership an a must win match so we’ll be going into the game full throttle. Following that game there is another A league game at home on the 23rd against Sale it would be good to see you all there for your Christmas dose of rugby.
As always, thank you for your support. I hope you all have a very merry Christmas.
James
