So, once in a while you come up against a side that is just a bit better than you and try as you might you just can’t get a foothold in the oppositions half, this happened on Friday night at The Stute as Nottingham Corsairs visited in The National Colts Cup.
Ilkeston were full of confidence going into the game and rightly so after their fantastic performance last Friday, the day started badly with inspirational scrum half Regan Till having an accident at work forcing him to cry off, this led to a reshuffle with George Doughty lacing up his Dads old scrum half boots and Josh Woods making a welcome return to hooking duties after a lengthy lay off with injury.
It’s credit to these lads that they can adapt to changes at short notice and the power of our scrum with Ciaran and Ethan propping was not diminished in any way, our lineout ball was as good as ever and the always impressive Ant and Joel even managed a few steals of the opposition ball.
Around the park Cole put in as many tackles as ever and Dylan was always first up to want to carry along with Tom who went on a couple of his own trademark barnstorming runs.
Our rucking at times was the best we have seen so far this year and it was good to see our centres Liam and Alfie getting over and protecting the ball carriers following our ethos of if you’re the nearest supporting player you do your job no matter what number you have on your back!!
Matt and Henry had a hell of a lot of work to do on the wings against some very speedy opposition, who were put into space well by Corsairs, and they scrambled back, tackled and chased all night to their credit.
On the occasions that Corsairs kicked Ash was safe as ever under the highball, managed a few trademark sidesteps but counter attacking was always going to be difficult with the organised chase from Corsairs.
Halfbacks George and Harry linked well to try and manufacture gaps in attack but it was just one of those nights when try as we might the holes weren’t there!
We were down to just Bayleigh on the bench making cameo appearances as back row and centre, he tackled, carried, and even made a play for consideration as emergency scrum half in the future with a box kick!!?
At times our shape went a bit but the lads managed to gather themselves and regroup, for 10/15 minutes in each half we were equal to Corsairs and gave the always appreciative crowd plenty to cheer but, as I said earlier, sometimes you just come up against a better side.
Would we swap any of our lads for theirs? Not a chance!!
We look forward to seeing a big crowd when Coalville visit The Stute on November 8th.