It had to happen sooner or later and this weekend Hammies 3rd’s lost their unbeaten run going back into middle of last season, downed 27-12 to an excellent False Bay side on Saturday.
False Bay scored twice inside the 1st quarter with some great line breaks and quick counter attack breaching our defence and then great support play to round off both scores which were also very well converted in windy conditions.
Shocked at 17 nil down, the forwards responded to their captains call for more intensity.
Dan MacKenzie eventually getting the try late into 1st half injury time to level things out a bit after a bruising 1st half encounter.
17-7 Half time score.
Hammies did take momentum into the second half and as the game wore on you sensed that Hammies would have the edge given the mostly dominant forward effort, but no one could have predicted the calamitous events that were about to unfold.
Hammies should feel aggrieved after having seen one of the False Bay locks get red carded for an elbow to the head of Hammies lock Leo Fortallier. Leo managed to hold his nerve and not retaliate. Leo also had a fine all round game and won our man of the match award. Well played Frenchie!!
After a great start to the 2nd half we conceded a try against the run of play which was a real kicker to go 24-7 down. The boys bounced back immediately applying sustained pressure and showing great patience in the build up to Bobby Louw’s try. Soon thereafter a further yellow card was given to False Bay for very high and late tackle that could also easily been a red card. With a strong player numerical advantage and good field position the ref called time 22 minutes into the 2nd half.
How sad that the time keeping got so badly botched by the officials. The end of it Hamilton’s played 10 minutes of extra time into a stiff 1st half breeze, more frustrating was that Hammies were denied the time to make their numerical advantage count in the shortened 2nd half. False Bay finished the game with 13 on the field in what became a really unfair contest all round. Why did the officials have to mess it up and this have happen on such a big occasion for Club Rugby? Questions must be asked.
The backline had it rough most of the day facing some well organised False Bay defence forcing errors from us at regular intervals.
Hammies forwards however were magnificent in a complete reversal from the previous week where the backs had bailed us out a poor performance. This week the forwards kept us in it with terrific scrumming and strong defence line outs and rucking all functioned well on the day.
So to Durbell where we expect both sets to put it together and beat Durbell on their home patch. The forwards will need an even bigger effort and a much improved back line performance playing under pressure is expected this week against DurBell.
Picture Credit: MatchPixSA
By Barry Herbert