RSRC 1XV wins against RC Tilburg 1

After having played away games for 8 weeks, due to some rescheduling by Mr WedSec, Dennis, and Ciara, we finally got to play at our own beautiful Bears’ Cave again. This time was the third time we got to play the gentlemen from Tilburg(er). The two times we played in Tilburg this season were won and lost once, with scores of 21-24 and 16-7 respectively, so this third game decided who was the real winner, and of course this only could be one team…

The day started of wet and windy, so the bilwangen were together gesqueezed in the cherishment of the expectation that the game was able to be played. Luckily Dennis and Ciara stayed at home; the rain and wind had stopped to harass our swamp. With 21 beautiful students in our squad, we had the breadth and the depth to take on the big lads from RC Tilburg.

From minute one it was a physically intense and hard game with big hits, big cleanouts, and big scrums. The game was quite equal, until our lock (who is actually a wing, but actually a lock) Pelle van Pappelendam broke through the meaty defense line and opened the score. With the wind in our face but the momentum going forward, the winger (who is actually a lock, but actually a winger) Roel Ruizeveld de Winter ran around the Tilburg winger and offloaded the holy oval to first time fullback Waltdolph Knuppel, who expanded our score in beautiful backs’ fashion to make it 10-0. The game was clean, with our forwards securing each and every ball in every ruck, scrum, and line out, and our backs doing some dazzling moves to run around the Tilburg defense. Even though we had two nice breaks on the left wing of our winger Boris Venema and our lock (or winger?) Pelle, we failed to secure the win straight away. It was Roel who broke through and this time to offloaded to Meneer de President Slurf Dobbelaar, who pressed the ball behind the Tilburg tryline to make sure we could have the half time break with less weight on our shoulders, as he crossed the tryline again; halftime score was 17-0, even though we finished the half with 13 men as 2 students failed to abide the rules and received a yellow card for a repeated infringement and a dangerous tackle.

The second half started, now with the wind in our back. We started strong again and made the gap in the score bigger through a break from Pelle, again. Tilburg started using their big forwards to crash and make meters in our 22-area. They managed to, after some very big defense from the forwards in red and green, secure their first points of the match. This was a wakeup call for us that the game was not over yet, and we asked second rower Pelle to tear the Tilburg defense apart once again, and he did; score 31-5. Tilburg tried the same tactic, and it worked again. They kept running into us, but after some amazing defense, with in particular our flanker Gianni Croes putting in some astonishing hits, they managed to score a try again. As the clock almost turned red, Waltdolph Knuppel broke through again to ground(???) the ball right next to the posts, to make the score 38-10. Tilburg did not give up and did exactly the same thing, only now they were awarded a penalty try after repeatedly failing to cross our tryline, which our forwards put their bodies on the line for, but failed to get onside on time once. Final score: 38-17.

Even now, as I am writing this on a rainy Tuesday, I still am not able to move my body without being sore in every muscle in my body. But, I couldn’t be happier and proud of our team, since we got the result we had in mind: 5 points and a great 3rd half.

Final score
38 – 17

Tries
Pelle van Pappelendam 3, Waltdolph Knuppel 2, Sam Dobbelaar

Conversions
Daniël Rodenburg 4

Line-up
15. Waltdolph Knuppel
14. Roel Ruizeveld de Winter
13. Julien Meijer
12. Sjoerd Govaerts
11. Boris Venema
10. Philip Jonker (c)
9. Marc Kranendonk
1. Daniël Rodenburg
2. Wouter Nommensen
3. Tom Benn-Woolley
4. Sam de Bode
5. Pelle van Pappelendam
6. Gianni Croes
7. Sam Dobbelaar
8. Felix Nieuwenhuizen

16. Kevin Cakim
17. Jeffrey van Uffelen
19. Hippolyte Hartman
20. Ties Hille Ris Lambers
21. Eduard Jansen
22. Floris Smits