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On 16 November 05 the Wandering Hands had their first outing in Bristol since the 2001/2002 season, and their first XVs match since “the beaten tour” to Edinburgh in 2003. Much had changed in Bristol in their absence. Coombe Dingle has become home to about a million different organisations, and it now sports an array of sparkly facilities. It has become harder and harder to get referees with the result that most games are now refereed by students (with varying levels of competency - see below). And a new pitch has been unveiled across the road. It is really, really, tiny, the smallest pitch that your correspondent has played on since his prep school days. This was the one allocated to the Hands and the Engineers.
Some things never change, though: The Engineers (rebranded these days to TUBES - The University of Bristol Engineering Society) still like to play a sort of uninspired reverse-genius risk-averse type of rugby based around rumbling it up and hoping not to knock it on before they get to the line. And who can argue? It was these endearingly crap tendencies that used to so endear them to us, back in the day. However, their bumbling formula had clearly been working, and the Engineers took the pitch as the provisional intra-mural champions, having won a tournament a week or so previously to which the Hands had not been invited. The Hands for their part were blessed with numbers and youth, but not with experience together. Guy McDougall, the new captain of the Wandering Hands (and as such the Greatest Man Alive ™) had assembled upwards of 20 players, most of whom were Freshers. There was also one older man in the backline, keen to preserve his age and his non-student status. The Hands rocked up, introduced themselves to each other, performed a perfunctory warm up, and took to the pitch, preening themselves on their nice red shirts. The Engineers style of rugby was, of course, perfectly suited to the postage-stamp of a pitch that we were playing on, so the Hands had a challenge to overcome. And they didn’t quite manage it. The tone of the game was set with the first few minutes. There were a few breakdowns, which were fairly evenly contested, but which ended up with the referee blowing up for holding on/not rolling away depending on whether the Engineers or the Hands had taken the ball in. One should not be too hard on referees. Without them we wouldn’t be able to play at all. And everyone has to start somewhere, and where better to start than intra-mural rugby? Having said that, this one was a real stinker. The Engineers signalled their intent immediately by making use of their kicker, who had both impressive accuracy and range. The Hands found themselves 3-0 down after 5 minutes, and then 6-0 down at the end of the half - the second penalty didn’t actually go over, but the referee awarded it anyway. It wasn’t long before the Hands pack was winning its own ball easily enough, although sometimes the Hands failed to commit quite enough men to rucks. And the story was similar in the backs: they gelled well enough, and looked dangerous on the counter-attack, but had a tendency to get a little flat, which blunted a potentially very sharp cutting edge. A number of impressive runs were made from 15 right through to 2. But time and time again the Engineers were let off by the referee penalising the Hands, awarding spurious knock-ons, or failing to play advantage to the Hands. And at times the Engineers helped themselves to loose ball, with their niggly open side and their ball-carrying number 8 doing their jobs usefully. At half time the Hands turned around and gained the benefit of the slope. A few substitutions were made, and there was a fair amount of belief that it could be turned around. But it was not to be. The Engineers were effective in filling the pitch (not a hard task, as previously emphasised). There were no gaps to go through, and kicking behind the defensive line was impossible as the dead ball line was never more than 15 metres away from anywhere else on the pitch… Over the course of the second half the Engineers kicked another two penalties (one from an extraordinarily long way out), and it became clear that the Hands were not going to get back into it. The Hands’ play became increasingly ragged as time ticked away, and more risks were taken. And then two sendings-off (of which 1) was for pushing an Engineer who had just thrown a punch, and 2) when a Hand described the ref as "shit", and the ref responded by sending off a different Hand, thereby proving the point) set the seal on it. The Engineers ran out 12-0 on the day, and given the conditions they probably deserved it. There were mutterings, however, that had the pitch not been designed for U11s and the referee not been on first name teams with the Hands’ opposition, things may have been different. There are many positives for the Hands to take from their comeback game. Despite being a scratch side, they did not have their line crossed by what was an older, better organised and more physical Engineers team. And although they did not have room to show the full range of their skills, it seems that Captain McDougall has assembled some forwards of promise, and some exciting attacking backs. The 10, 12, 13 combination promises great things (sorry boys, your play left more impression on me than your names), and there is a host of attacking potential from the back three, in particular Henry and Fred. The front row certainly held its own (before scrums had to go uncontested) due in no small part to a large man with part of his ear missing from a fight (possibly with Mike Tyson? They wouldn’t have been mismatched). The second row looked rangy, mobile and comfortable on the ball; and this years’ Hands look as though they are able to draw upon a number of useful loose forwards, not least McDougall himself. If this team comes together, it will do great things. So plenty to celebrate - and beside, the Hands never win the first game of the season. That would have been a bad omen.
15. Oliver Pool |