On Saturday 19th April four members of the Edwin Doran Twickenham office brought together friends and acquaintances to take part in a friendly end of season rugby match against The Merlins, an invitational side. Kick-off was scheduled for 2:30PM in Richmond Park and after an exhausting 10 minute warm up all the moves were decided (the call is “off the cuff”) and the team were raring to go. Skipper Jon Hobbs led the huddle in a rousing rendition of Kum-Ba-Ya (two verses) and the match kicked off.

From the outset, the game was well matched. The Merlins attempted to use their pace and fitness to offload the ball around the EDST defence but the scrambling efforts of Glavina and Hannaford foiled their tactics in the first 20 minutes. Unfortunately, sprinting around the pitch from side to side in an effort to cover the waves of attacks does tend to take its toll after a while and the defence was breached on three occasions in the first half. However, for a scratch side who had never played before, the EDST team managed to string together some neat phases and a simple scissor move orchestrated by Barlow released the powerfully inside centre who beat two defenders then drew the full back to send Hobbs in from the 10m line for the first (and only) try of the game for EDST.

The second half was always a contest but despite some powerful runs from Glavina, some classic turnovers from Hannaford and some aggressive chat from Barlow the EDST team were unable to get back into the match and ended up losing 34 – 7. Everyone had a great laugh and it has inspired the EDST boys to form a 7’s team for the summer months to enter a few tournaments – well, maybe one or two.