By Charlie Allen
February 5 2008

Saturday 27th October 2008, friendly match. With a week off from league duties, Harlequin Amateurs travelled to Sunbury to face London Irish Amateurs 2s. With their 1s flying three leagues higher, this was expected to be a tough battle for the away side.

After 2 minutes Mark Sowden scored hisfirst try for the Quins 1st XV as he crashed through from an attacking scrumand ran unchallenged under the posts. From the kick off, Quins quickly peggedIrish into their own corner for a defensive line-out. Quins stole the line-out,drove forward and then scored under the posts with Danny Beaumont side-steppingaround the ruck.

Irish moved into attack and won penaltyafter penalty as Quins strayed offside and for not releasing. This led harshlyto a yellow card for consistent offending and Irish took the 3 points. With 14men the Irish saw opportunities and quickly gained another 3 points from moreQuins offences. Soon however Quins were back on the attack - James Loizos sawan opportunity for a cross-field kick and Nick Marren caught it on the full toscore in the corner.

In the second half, Irish were first toscore, driving a line-out into the corner for 5 points. Immediately Quinsscored a drop goal and then the tries started to come thick and fast. Simplehands put Bruce Uglow through for a try, and then Sowden capitalised as theQuins forwards disrupted an Irish scrum on their own line. A second Irish catchand drive try was sandwiched between two more Quins tries so that Quinstravelled home with a comprehensive 44-16 victory.

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