Ho ho ho!

After a cava-fuelled coach journey with a bucket of sticky chilli sausages, some sausage rolls, scotch eggs and other lovelies we poured out into a sunny Worcester afternoon to admire our surroundings.

Sixways is a very nice ground with a couple of nice spacious bars, a pork roll van and covered terraces. The sort of ground a traditional club should have! The stewards were friendly, the bouncers were kitted out in Santa hats and the locals were welcoming.

Having adorned our patch with flags, banners and balloons some of us watched the warm up and some went in to sample the refreshments.

Shortly before kick-off our lads came out, minus Sackey who had failed a late fitness test, there was a pause before the music to the Old Spice advert came blaring through the speaker above our heads and the Wuss boys shot out of the tunnel. I was a little distracted wondering if I should maybe get my Dad a bottle of aftershave…

From the start it was quite clear that Worcester’s main aim was to stop us playing and the fact that they were penalised 4 times in 10 minutes was highly indicative of that. Sadly the first skimmed past the right –hand post and the second skimmed past the left but the third sailed sweetly between the two for a massive 0-3 to the Irish.

Conceding penalties wasn’t the only area where Worcester dominated, they were also able to steal our thunder in the line-outs and did so one several occasions; yet it was quite apparent that they weren’t ever really threatening to do anything with the ball once they had it. For the majority of the first half, play was contained within the middle third of the pitch with Wuss having most of the possession but absolutely no direction. Tofty attempted a drop goal which was slightly off target before the indiscipline of the home side again became very evident.

Their 3 was sent to the bench for a high tackle giving Tofty the opportunity to make it 0-6 and only a matter of minutes later their 12 was sent to join him. I didn’t see the cause of that yellow card as the padding round the bottom of the upright was blocking my view!

While Wuss were down to 13 men Irish were driving towards their line, losing the ball, winning it back shortly after then repeating that same scenario over and over. Finally started to look really dangerous but, in one of two really bizarre decisions, Irish were penalised - while the Ref was giving us advantage - when Wuss clearly went in at the side. This decision was made even more bizarre as, at the initial infringement, Wuss hadn’t retreated the 10m!

Frustration started to show when Catty was binned for scooping the ball out while on the floor, in perhaps not the most subtle of moves. Wuss opt to kick for the points but miss by two counties. The whistle blows and the teams retire with the score 0-6 to the visitors.

The teams come back out with a fairly headless display in the first five minutes which led to a rare moment of brilliance. Horak made a nifty break and charged off towards the Wuss line before passing out to Spud who was galloping forward and ever-so-slightly right before being forced into touch. Sadly there wasn’t much in the way of support so he’d been unable to offload the ball.

That break seemed to wake the Worcester players up and for a few minutes they too were galvanised before their indiscipline again re-surfaced to see Irish awarded a penalty. Tofty kicked to touch.

Now I have to confess that at around this point, I stopped taking notes. There was absolutely nothing going on save for a repeat of the stagnant period of the first half. We’d win the ball, we’d throw it around a bit and we’d lose it. Wuss would have the ball, not have a plan, and we’d either win it back or they’d do something dodgy and the referee would hand it back to us. The only exception to this was when it seemed there was a resurrection of the bad feeling between Wuss and LaaLaa as again Rob was pinned to the floor with a member of the opposition trying to stove his head in. The Touch judge saw it, dragged the Worcester player off but the referee chose to ignore it.

Barry came on for Tofty. The magic boot, on its first kiss of the ball, sent it beautifully to touch on the Wuss 10m line. Irish won the ball (from a huge throw which went much further than the players expected it to and ended up in Irish arms more by luck than judgement!) and progressed towards the Wuss line but were frustrated time and time again and the frustration seemed to bring out the petulant child in the Worcester no.4.

However, they siezed their moment and the ball moved swiftly to the other end of play so that Irish were forced to defend their own line from 5m. There seemed to be a number of infringements going unpunished before a messy ball was cleared by Barry. Spud and Awesome were replaced by Reid and Gussie, Hodgson and Russell were replaced by Barrett and Paice and Nick the Ball was replaced by Strudders. I’d be able to give you the times of these replacements if Worcester had a clock!

Mike Catt scored a peachy drop goal just around about the time that those around me thought was full time but the ref played on.

And on.

And on.

Wuss, to their credit did not give up. They pushed and pushed and made a right shambles of our scrum. We were driven back a fair distance and it is possible that had the momentum continued and had Irish not maintained their rock-solid defence then a try might have been scored. It’s possible but we’ll never know because the Referee decreed that a try-preventing infringement had occurred and awarded a penalty try. We were totally gob-smacked until someone pointed out that it was the rugby equivalent of a mercy shag, then it made perfect sense.

Wuss converted and the man with the whistle, after what seemed like 9 days of added time, finally played the longed-for note. Full time and the score was Worcester 7 – Irish 9.

In conclusion, Worcester obviously had a plan to stop us playing rugby. Had we been on fire, then I think they’d have struggled. We weren’t and they didn’t! Our defence was heroic and Hodgson’s try-saving tackle earns him my MoTM nomination, he was enormous!!

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