A boy called Sue

By Stopsy
April 3 2007

There is a theory that in order to build toughness in male progeny you should call them Sue, dress them in feminine attire and send them to the local rough house to ask the toughest guy for a kiss. Those shirts must be the rugby example of this and just how tough are Stade? Very is your answer.

The game itself was never in doubt once Mr Lewis blew his most popular whistle of the afternoon.

A beautiful day greeted the full house along with thousands of flags, the club obviously heeding Inky’s request earlier in the day.

We might (what do I mean might?) enjoy a good moan about the way the club is run but I offer a few things we should thank them for.

1. The squad
2. Performances like today
3. some nice flags and…
4. at least we don’t wear shocking pink!

The Saints result rippled through the crowd and was instantly well received, then the horror scenario set it, Saints were in the semis, we were not, yet!

Stade’s warm up kit left little to the imagination in terms of the underlying physique may look like, actually I am not sure whether they were wearing anything or simply spray painted.

The dapper Mr Lewis took centre stage and blew on his shiny whistle and we were off. Stade kicked to us, Geordan collected and passed to Goodey who cleared to touch. From the line out Stade showed good handling skills and looked difficult to stop in the first tackle, maybe those shirts were impregnated with baby oil! The ball was moving swiftly along the back line until wham, Alex took Stefan Glas, man and ball with a crowd pleasing and rousing tackle, Glas hanging onto the ball for over the nano-second that Mr Lewis had decided was the limit for the day, at least he was consistent. From the penalty to touch, the ball was won in the line out and Alex then ran a delightful angle and crashed through, he was brought down but not held and scrambled close to the Stade 5m line, the ball was recycled a few times and then Seru went over to score in the corner for an unconverted try after only 3 minutes! Don’t worry, the rest of this report will not be so detailed!

Again we seemed to be having trouble getting to grips with the Stade players in the tackle, as Stade hammered back at us and seemed to make ground all the time, Mad-Eye obviously shared that view and decided to come in from the side to prevent further progress. Mr Lewis shared this interpretation and awarded a penalty which Skrela duly converted. The Stade scrummage seemed to provide decent ball but also seemed under some pressure. Both sides seem to be having trouble with the ball and knocking on a lot, perhaps the baby oil was seeping from the pink shirts onto the ball? Unfortunately Senhor Hernandez’s shirt proved far too slippery and he ghosted through and past 3 or 4 defenders to score in the corner. The kick, not helped by the gusting wind, was unsuccessful.

Tigers’ Forwards seemed to be getting the upper hand and tried a number of shunts on our own ball and although we made ground, we didn’t seem to do much from it.

Stade were shortly penalised for not rolling away and Goodey equalised, not deterred by this, Monsieur Martin repeated the activity but appeared to get a bit of attention on the deck for his troubles and Mr Lewis decided a 10 minute rest would help him recover and Goodey repeated the punishment with an almost Stimmoesque bounce off the upright.

We then took the next scrum against the head and lineout against the throw but the Stade rush defence was excellent and stifled any threats. Stade levelled the score with a penalty after Julian’s over enthusiastic rucking of Roncero was judged to have been a tad naughty, it’s a good job the ref didn’t see Geordan on the other side! The halftime whistle went to close what had been a frantic 40 minutes.

Half time past with the sighting of a giant on the pitch, had he recruited deliberately small people to stand around him? Game on and all to play for, Goodey and Skrela exchanged penalties to take us to 14 apiece, the Stade pick and go was effective and neither side had time to build, but Stade then scored with a penalty and a drop goal and the game started to slip away. The Alex stormed down the wing, surely he would score, but the ref’s arm stayed down, I didn’t see the tackle at the time but it must have been better than Geordan’s on Chabal last week!

We then set up pressure on the Stade line with a set of scrums originating from Hazza’s Kamikazi face butting of the ball, but again they came to nothing.

Then the Hippo slipped half a yard and passed out of the contact to Tom who sped over and under the sticks for a try that set the ground alight, Goodey adding the extras.

We then endured an excruciating end period where the defence was phenomenal and Stade went for the coup de grace (posh French eh?) unsuccessfully. Eventually a knock on closed the game down.

Fantastic performance from both sides, the slimmest of margins changed the game throughout. Games like this are what I long for every season. Wonderful and so to Sale on Friday.