Tourists Whitewashed In Eight Try Win
By AlanQuin
December 6 2005
The Australian Northern Suburbs RFC is an ambitious and old-established club from Sydney New South Wales. With the support of an impressive list of sponsors headed by Japanese Air Lines they have come on a four match world tour which began against Quins 2nd XV last night.
Both the venue and the result will have been a great disappointment to the visitors who had hoped to be playing at The Stoop. Instead the match was transferred to Imber Court to reduce the number of games being played on The Stoop pitch in the next few weeks. The visitors, too, must have hoped to have done rather better than to find themselves on the wrong end of a 56 – 0 defeat. The fact is that they were outclassed and outplayed both in the forwards and by the Quins fast running backs with Charlie Amesbury running in a hat-trick of tries.
It took Quins a little while to begin to overcome their opponents although it was clear from the first line-out and first scrum that the forwards would easily dominate the tourists, denying them easy possession of the ball. Although the opening exchanges gave some promise of a more even contest than eventually resulted, unforced errors and good defence prevented their having an early score.
A penalty to Quins in mid-field saw Adrian Jarvis find touch deep in the visitors’ twenty-two for an attacking line-out. The catch and drive was resisted but from the resulting breakdown James Hayter emerged to cross for the first try. Jarvis converted easily, as he did with each of his eight attempts in the match.
A poor restart which went straight into touch gave Quins a scrum in the centre and from the set piece Vass put a clever low kick through towards the right hand corner which was picked up by Guest, who jinking past three defenders passed inside for Aston Croall to score Quins second try within three minutes.
Quins might have had another try shortly afterwards when another penalty kick saw Jarvis find touch five metres from the left corner but the resulting catch and drive saw the ball held up and no try scored. Two five-metre scrums resulted and from the second of these, with the pack beginning to rumble forward, Ian Vass picked up and darted over to score. With the first half-hour gone Quins led 21 – 0
Almost immediately from the restart Quins were again on the attack and the ball was being passed between the backs with speed and skill until it found Amesbury who went over for the first of his three tries.
Despite attempts by the visitors to assert themselves and press the Quins defence, unforced errors and good defence prevented their capitalising upon territorial gains. As the half was ending with Quins again pressing, Kiba Richards came in off the left wing with a very fast diagonal run that carved through the defence to score under the posts to give a half-time score of 35 – 0
With half-time came substitutions, Burke came on for Diprose, Hayter and Croal were withdrawn and Alex Rogers and Mark Lambert replaced them, the latter playing for the first time after eight months off through injury. Norths, too, began to rotate substitutes and as there were no team sheets it was not possible to follow. Quins, too, had three players on loan from Esher whose identity was a mystery.
It took only a couple of minutes for Quins to add to their score, this time from a pushover try which was touched down by Tom Guest. Quins began to run harder and faster in attempts to score. A superb break by Jarvis through the centre pinned the tourists back to within ten metres of their try-line. A few minutes later a fine cross-kick to the corner by the fly-half saw Amesbury take the catch in the in-goal area and touch down only to have the try disallowed for allegedly being in front of the kicker.
But Amesbury was not to be denied and as the third quarter neared its end the ball passed rapidly along the backs found Amesbury with an easy run in to score. Jarvis, who was having a fine game, converted for the seventh time and the score was 49 – 0.
The best try of the evening was yet to come and it was Charlie Amesbury again who scored as he received the ball just outside the Quins’ twenty-two and set off at great speed, swerving past at least three would-be tacklers to score some 70 metres later, between the posts. The tourists had lost by 56 – 0.
There were particularly good performances from Jarvis and Amesbury and in the forwards from Guest. As a spectacle the match was too one-sided but since it is the last 2nd XV match until 16th January, the game time was valuable. The match scheduled for 12th December in the A League against Saracens has been postponed.
15. Mike Brown, 14. Kiba Rchards, 13. Charlie Amesbury, 12. Jordan Turner-Hall , 11. Duncan James, 10. Adrian Jarvis, 9. Ian Vass, 1. Aston Croall, 2. James Hayter, 3. Lorne Ward, 4. James Inglis, 5. George Robson, 6. Tom Guest, 7. Darren Clayton, 8. Tony Diprose