A combined 2nd and 3rd team made the short trip to Loughborough to play against Loughborough 4th team, the Melbourne team contained 6 front row and missed a few key players but was not as it proved to be missing as many as Loughborough who only had 13. 

Match Report

Kevin Holdgate and Kai Roper bravely joined the Loughborough team and Melbourne re-arranged with Duckie at Scrum Half, (apart from at lineouts), and pop in the centres, Dave Lowson swapped to tight head and Mick Webb returned from a year sabbatical at lose head.

The Loughborough team was a collection of old men and boys, but very few of them were fat and during the warm up it appeared a few could play a bit.

The pitch was in good nick and Melbourne played against the wind and into the sun in the 1st half. From the off it was clear that Loughborough were a genuine 4th team of mixed ability whilst Melbourne were a bit better, especially in the scrums where Kev Holdgate was being supported in the 2nd row by a 4 stone and 7 foot hippie.

Melbourne had loads of ball and threatened to score immediately, if Loughborough did get any ball the ref awarded a scum for an offense and Melbourne simply drove them off it. This led to the 1st try fro Gary Lakin at Centre and was followed by four more, for Sutheran, Fulton. Duckie and another for Lakin, 3 were converted by Fulton.To make the score 31-0 at half time.

Just on the half time Whistle, big police man Greig who had made a number of storming runs, mainly from re starts was hauled down 1 yard short damaged a knee and had to go off, (hope it OK Greig) he was about to try prop so maybe he did it on purpose.

Highlight of the half was Hoodo knocking on when over the line follow a 'tackle' by our own Kai Roper. Hoodo was prominent throughout the half but mainly for cocking things up.

Melbourne had played ok given the circumstances and Pop and Fulton looked very good and fitter than at the beginning of the year, the only surprise was the lack of a try for Gary Yates.

The 2nd half started with Gary scoring almost immediately, (unconverted) and then Melbourne had a crap 5 minutes where we kicked away procession and from a fast retreating scrum Loughborough picked up on the blind side and the winger rounded Toppo to score in the corner.

36-5. One of the Loughborough players then made the rash statement to us that we were not that much better than them which got us a bit annoyed and we immediately scored from the restart, and then another three times with tries for Ridges, another for Fulton and two more for Yates. 3 converted by Fulton who is clearly feeling he can overtake Euan in the points scored.

The game descended into farce when the Loughborough wing broke out of defense and chose to run into Toppo dipping at the last moment rather than run around him (which he had done in the 1st half) and Toppo grabbed him by the neck , Toppo was sent off for 10 minutes for the 1st time inhis career and Melbourne were down to 13 men.

The game ended in farce with Hoodo knocking on a lot when clean through and generally everybody messing about, I for one was glad when the ref blew early following Nasty Nigel Breakwell, kneeling on a Loughborough players head.

Final score 62-5

Big respect to Kev and Kai for playing for Loughborough they may well have been their best players. Thanks to Loughboroughfor trying until the end and it would make a good 3rd team fixture at 15 a side.

Next week's dress code is clothes you would wear on a Saturday after rugby.No body has to wear a hat or clowns outfit.