"Can anyone play 2nd row?"

It was a a brisk autumnal day and after a long drive to Buckingham, an inexperienced Wheatley seconds team, made up of a rag tag group of players that contained no specialist 2nd rows, half a back row and no specialist 9, 10, centres or full back, were kitted up and ready to play in whatever positions they could!

Buckingham, on the other hand, had a solid, experienced and strong 15 players and even the luxury of a substitute. Wheatley however had to start with only 14 having been victims to dropouts and Matt Richard's running late, with 5 people playing their first full game of Rugby.

None the less, Captain James Norton did his best to steady the nerves of the players before the kick off, firing up the side and preparing them for the long day ahead. Despite the rousing words, the cracks started to show and within 10 minutes, Wheatley were down by 10. A point a minute ratio was not a good start.

20 minutes in, Matt Richard's finally showed his face, putting Wheatley up to a full team. He had a instant impact cutting in from the wing screaming "GOING FOR THE GAP!!". Unfortunately for him, the gap he could see was a gap between two props legs that he thought he could crawl through and due to the loud exclamation of what he was doing, the gap was promptly closed.

Despite being outgunned in the majority of play, the Wheatley scrum looked solid from start to end (expect maybe the last 5 where Keir Williams couldn't make it to the final scrum, after jogging to hard all afternoon), and even with Buckingham's experience and extra weight (An easy 70-100kgs advantage) they failed to break Wheatley's pack. This was Wheatley's strongest play on the park with the pack holding strong to not loose a single Wheatley put in.

The line-outs and rucks however were as messy as one of the hookers new born's nappies and Jake knew how messy the set piece had become, finding himself cleaning up after play that was full of poop.

By half time Wheatley were down 25-0 (thanks to the Buckingham kicker for keeping the score down!) and heads were low. Some great team spirit and motivational speeches from Irish Jonny and Norton contained words which fell on deaf ears.

The second half was an improvement, with the team hitting some big tackles throughout the second half and starting to put together some phases, but some fantastic play and great movement from Buckingham started to drive them home and begin to sucker punch the Wheatley new boys who had played so well.

A valiant effort in the last twenty minutes from the Wheatley with some big hits and ambitious plays couldn't even get some points on the board ending the game at 49/0

The captain's last words of the day were Positive signs from an inexperienced team, reminding them that last year in the same fixture it ended 69/0, so in some ways this was an improvement on that! With more time and practise/ fitness we could have taken the game to Buckingham a lot more and most importantly, Wheatley showed up.

An honourable mention has to go to Dan, Tom, Tom, Robbo and Craig who despite playing their first game's of rugby, took their hits and showed great commitment to the purple shirt.

MOTM - Craig Buddle - Great decision making at full back and showed us all that never having played rugby is not a barrier when you are a Kiwi!
DOTD - Everyone involved in the 'refusing to move' Lineout (bar the throwing - that was spectacular)

Words by Keir Williams