A strongish Melbourne team went down to a hastily rearranged fixture at Leicester Lions with little idea of who we were playing, the Melbourne team was strong with Will Judge back from Thailand and Mssr's Lowson, and Breakwell descending from the 1sts, the backs were also bolstered by a run out for Pete Illot.

Match Report

We turned up for a 2:30 kick off but at about 3pm a very relaxed gang of elderly gentlemen sauntered out in ones and two's to play us, most smoking pipes and finishing their beer. It turned out they were the vets, we presumed it would be game where they mauled and scrummed and we ran around a fair amount but we were to be proved wrong.

I think we felt pretty confident from the start and for the first 10 minutes played as if we were going to win with ease, in the scrums we were fairly dominant but in the line outs Leicester Lions clearly had been practicing and could take ball at two at will, despite Judgie being a foot taller than their jumper.

We made the early running and from a middle line out well taken by Bompie the ball was spun put through all the backs to Gary Yates to run in another try.

I for one thought we would go onto win comfortably but I was wrong, it turned out that Leicester Lions had some very good backs who, given a chance could still shift very quickly, they started to play very fast and lose, taking quick penalties and line outs and making good ground they soon scored 7-5 to Leicester Lions, they the repeated this twice more before half time once again from a series of quick taps etc and then from an interception in midfield 19-5 at half time and we were feeling a bit shocked.

Their a few theories on why we were losing but since I am bothering to type this I can put mine in (Pete Illot believes the opposite) we simply kept giving the ball away along way from any supporting players either by kicking it and missing touch or by handling errors in midfield. This allowed Leicester Lions to turn over ball in danger areas and they were just the team to capitalize.

In the 2nd half a few things changed Leicester Lions brought on a very good scrum half we bucked up our ideas in the line out with Judgie going up everytime to make Leicester Lions throw over him and Bompie then disrupted in the middle, as the scrums were going our way this robbed Leicester Lions of a lot of their clean ball, but still we went further behind with another interception in midfield allowing them to score 26-5.

I think at this time Melbourne were worried about losing 40+ to 5 and we began to make a fight of it, almost immediately Matt Brown scored a great try 26-10 and then after a few more minutes another again out wide and well taken. 26-17 ish.

I think we began to believe we could win, Chris Fulton was putting in great long kicks with the wind slightly behind him the pack were turning over scrummage ball and ball in the lose and backs were cutting lose on a regular basis. Leicester Lions and Kev Brown watching seemed to sense that Melbourne could win and tried to exert a bit of pressure but we got our revenge when Pete Illot picked up a lose ball in midfield from a Leicester Lions attack and ran the ball back from our 22 passing to Chris Fulton with only 50 yards to go who passed it back to Pete who scored under the posts 24-26,

I think the Leicester Lions heads went down a bit then and it was fairly inevitable that Melbourne would score again, and with 5 minutes to go following good recycled forward ball and quick hands the ball came to Gary Yates to run in a try 31-26.

The last 5 minutes were fairly comfy for Melbourne and the game ended with us in the lions half.

Great win and a great fight backfrom Melbourne,. Leicester Lions were a good team in the backs with scrum half, wingers, and at least one centre looking as if they had played at a much higher level, and further post match investigations proved they were the 1st team backs from 20 years ago and had played for the county and Leicester tigers. I bet they don't lose very often. (Imagine playing a team made of up of two browners, two big watties and 3 Stuart Hamiltons)

The game was played in good spirit and was very open and flowing,

Melbourne all played well but Gary Yates ran very fast when required, Bompie and Smithy got everywhere.