E

The prospect of starting the season with a trip to what seemed like the end of the world to play a cup game is probably about as crap as it can be.

 A very depleted Loonies squad made the long trip along the coast to Bognor to play a preliminary round in the Salver. It is important to stress at this stage that this was a bloody long way to go and I think that put off a lot of players.

Anyway, rolling into Bognor past the 1950’s holiday prison that is Butlins is a less than inviting sight. Due to a slight diversion to pick someone up in Brighton a third of the team arrived about 15 minutes before kick off only to find out that we were playing on the furthest pitch from the clubhouse.

 So with a lack of proper warm up and a heavily depleted squad playing in the middle of no where the 2007/08 season kicked off.

 George (new addition to the team) proved to be something of an enigma, that was for about 5 minutes until he got smashed in a tackle and went off complaining that he had broken his ribs, an injury that would plague him for the other two games of his short rugby career.

Matt Sands scored the first Loonie points of the seasons with a penalty in front of the posts to give Hellingly a 3 – 0 lead. Bognor hit back with two quick tries only for Damen to smash through the defence and claim the first Hellingly try of the season. Matt Sands gladly adding the conversion.

 George was replaced by Loonie folklore hero Colin Murphy.

 Dan the prison guard who thinks he has an eye for a gap and was begging for the ball on the blindside but was smashed by the solid Bognor defence prompting him to hobble around the pitch for the rest of the match, later saying it was caused by a torn abductor muscle.

 Leaving the score at 17 – 12 to the home side at half time.

 The Bognor attack plan seemed to centre around run at the littlest man on the pitch (Colin) who was unable to stop the repeated 2 on 1 attacks.

 Nic Woollard scored from a well worked set piece.

A tired and battered Hellingly team were given light relief by possibly the speech of the year from the ref when giving Dennis and an opposition player a talking to, it went something along the lines of:

Ref: “In me country on dogs fight, is you a dog?”

Dennis for some reason took exception to this and was left speechless other than running round growling at anything that come towards him.

The final whistle brought the curtain down on the first game of the season and with it the 2nds hopes of matching their great cup run from a couple of years ago.

Final score: Bognor 4 – 32 Hellingly 2 - 15

 Team: 1) Nic Woollard 2) Dennis Gower 3) Roger Simmons 4) Richard Jones 5) Julian Thackery 6) Adam Jordan (c) 7) Steve Tester 8) Ollie Land 9) Ben Hodd 10) Gareth Hulin 11) George 12) Damen 13) Dan The Prison Man 14) Steve Dabbs 15) Matt Sands 16) Colin Murphy