South demoralise Manchester 62-5 as both DK and Syston lose!

Before talking about the game it is right to acknowledge the warmth and hospitality experienced at Manchester's Cheadle Hulme ground in leafy Cheshire. Manchester Football Club is thought to be the second oldest rugby club in the world after Blackheath, has a proud tradition and is probably unfairly labelled the whipping boy of English league rugby these days.
Beset by a fall from grace on the field these past few years, the club is clearly working very hard to maintain its heritage and enable its youngsters to enjoy their rugby at what must be said is a very good facility, 12 miles south of Manchester and close to the homes of the wendyball brigade from Old Trafford and The City of Manchester stadium. We should all wish the loyal band of members at Manchester well as they try and stabilise their first team in the English league structure.

On the wide and well maintained pitch this was always going to be one way traffic and South did a fairly convincing job of chasing down the points difference deficit which had been keeping Dudley Kingswinford ahead in the league table. As it turned out the steel men of Scunthorpe did us a favour, inflicting DK's first defeat since our win in the Black Country on the opening day.

Common sense was applied to the South team selection with Mark Lord, Will Keeling and Lee Miller rested. this meant Nick Griffin reverting to full back with Mitch Culpin moving to centre and Matt Fisher returning on the wing. Kris McFedries returned at scrum half and a very off colour Rickie Aley moved into the ten berth despite his bout of food poisoning during the week.

Andy Harris came into the front row to allow Mark Bayley to keep the bench warm and skipper Luke Coltman returned after a three week absence at hooker with Braveheart McNaughton moving to prop.
Jack Hague joined the back row and James Sutliff and debutant Lewis Moult made up the bench

South got the scoreboard ticking over early with a Nick Griffin try that no doubt fed his obssession for his "stats" and a Chris Bale try was sandwiched between two well finished efforts from Matt Fisher. It was a grey, damp and deceptively blowy afternoon and Rickie Aley was only able to convert one of these tries in the first half to give South a 22 nil lead at the break. At times South played some scintilating rugby with notable performances from Jack Hague, Simon Johnson and Sam Greasley who was plucking balls from the sky like an Ecuadorian eagle rising above the Andes to snatch its pray and then cutting loose, Habana style, as if through heards of wilderbeast on the Serengetti plain, a joy to watch, hard to believe Hinckley once nurtured that talent!

Despite some interesting interpretations of the offside laws, which certainly had Mitch Culpin scratching his head, South added six tries in the second half, two from Coltman who was denied his hat trick when ajudged to have knocked on, one each from McFedries, Habana Greasley and Culpin who all showed great skill in their picking of lines to score. The final try was a penalty try which was awarded when the hosts couldn't handle a defensive scrum and the addition of Mark Bayley. Rickie Aley landed five out of six in the second half to give South 62 points with the only repost being a try for the hosts which came out of a sequence of penalties which confused all thirty players and every man and his dog inside the stadium. To add to this Connor Smith received a yellow card for a private conversation with Rickie Aley at the restart, most odd.

All in all a job well done, only the rampant Lions of Rugby have sccored more points at Manchester this season and we now go into our next match on November 12th with a home fixture against the said Lions who sit five points ahead of ourselves at the top of the league. A true top of the table encounter and surely not one for the feint hearted. Boothy's bunker will be shrouded in security for the next two weeks as he strategises and plans for the "big one". Will Backy's boys bowl us over or will Field Marshall Booth and General Dosser Smith mastermind a plan to thrill the South faithful? Who knows? But one thing is for certain, nobody should miss it. Put it in the diary now; November 12th 2.15pm, South Leicester RFC, be there.