K.Pike (c), M.Laing, O.Lansdell, A.Holding-Parsons, W.Carew-Gibbs, J.Knowling, E.Thomas, C.Price, C.Pratt, D.Weir, A.Lund, P.Crang, S.Wildbur, R.Wynn, F.Luard, G.Bently, H.Froud, W.Crawshaw

As I approached The Three Old Castles in deepest Somerset, rumour had it that some of AGSC’s finest were gathered for a pre-match briefing. I was particularly looking forward to hearing what strategy we would take up against the Recent Leavers and what game plan the team were going to play. As I entered it became clear that the meeting was in its sixth hour and still going strong.
Club captain and prop, Kev Pike, recounted his crucial life changing decision he had to make at 22 on whether he turned professional in rugby or whether he went in the commercial world. He went on to say how he felt he had made a real success of his life despite scrapping his life policy in recent months after they declared him clinically obese.
Second row, Marco Laing, who has changed his name for career reasons to Mark O’Laing (in case people thought he was a polish builder of ill repute), tried to convince the pub that his 16 and a half stone frame shrunk every morning and he looked like an under nourished POW from WWII. The mind boggles as to how one’s weight fluctuates by 10 stone on a daily basis. Despite the scientific impossibilities it all made perfectly good sense to him after 6 hours of cider.
Prop, Knowlers, was giving plenty of chat (cigarette in the mouth with his eyes shut) claiming he was ready to make the step up to the front row after 9 years in the back row. For someone about to take on such a brutal challenge the next day, you could not fault his confidence as he guzzled another cider and black to make it a round 10 pints for the evening. Job well done. Pre-season preparation – perfect.
Winger, Frank Luard, struggled to stay vertical as he discussed (shouted and slurred) whether to put his boots on for the first time since 2001 and just a week before his wedding.
Full back, Thommo, talked about his summer in France reclining on his velvet-covered chaise-longue while beautiful Provencal virgins fed him chilled grapes from a diamond encrusted replica of the Growers Player of the Season Tankard. Fit, well conditioned and pissed as a tramp raring to take on the OBA youngsters.
Outside centre, Paul Crang was the only remotely coherent member of the gathering on the eve of arguably the Growers biggest game in its history.
Over the summer there had been copious amounts of predictions about the game resulting in 2 schools of thought:

1. The Recent Leavers would be too young, physically inferior and inexperienced in the volatile world of mens’ rugby.
2. They would be fit, skilful and the game was going to be a close run contest.

The club was split 50/50 although match manager Mark O’Laing will testify after my strongly worded email to him (5000 word thesis on how this game must not be underestimated and they were going to be strong opposition) that I was in the latter and correct school of thought.
The warm up was the usual format of Kev becoming irate over a game of touch but I can confirm that Aidy’s grass on the 1st XV pitch was so soft you could have curled up in it and slept happily for a thousand years.
I peered across to our opposition who were practising their moves on the dodgy 2nd XV pitch trying to get any tips on what tactics they were going to adopt. It became clear that they were going use line-outs against us at some point.
As the Growers roared out of the pavilion it turned out that the Recent Leavers were already one up on us as they had been practicing on the correct pitch. As the Recent Leavers came out we saw that almost to a man they were bigger than us and had their own version of – SQQUUEEEZZZEE (with some extra words on the end that I couldn’t quite make out). Very impressive. They continued their clever organisation and cohesion into the game scoring almost all the points in the first half. They used the slope well and varied their game. They got to the breakdown first securing good ball for their exciting backs and capitalised on a number Growers’ errors.
Irishman Mark O’Laing had the turning speed of an oil tanker, Gibbsy was unable to drag his prize winning balls from breakdown to breakdown playing his second game of the weekend and other than Chris ‘yes that’s my hand in the ruck again’ Pratt and Alex ‘Gobby’ Holding-Parsons our pack was decidedly slow. To make matters worse I had reluctantly agreed to play 9 as there was no-one else, leaving us admittedly weak in that area of the pitch, Froudy injured himself after 30 seconds with a groin strain as a consequence of years of abuse wearing tiny shorts and before we knew it the squad had depleted to just 16. 19-3 down at half time and a change of tactics was needed.
 Kev was so irate at half time he tried to ban water drinking but the oppressor was overruled by the masses. The Growers were going to have to resort to tactics never used by them before; stuff it up your jumper, maul at every possibility and kick for territory. Perhaps the new 0.1% cotton traditional hooped shirts straight from the mid 90’s was the start of a new era in Growers rugby? The tactics worked and Pike and Gibbsy (now stuffing 3 balls into his kit) were thriving. Sustained pressure from the forwards paid off with myself sniping round the side of a ruck for the first try. Already feeling quite smug in calling the game correctly, winning a few thousand arguments over the summer about the Recent Leavers’ capabilities, I was now the top try scorer for the 2007/2008 season with a total of one (take note Felly). This was soon followed by a classic try in the corner for Wildbur but not before it passed through most of the Growers hands and finally to Frank Luard who had his greatest and last moment as a bachelor by drawing the last man in defence to put the ‘Wild Boar’ in.
 19-20 up and Growers were on the verge of their greatest comeback in what had been the most physically testing game in 7 years of Growers history. No sooner had the words left the mouth of skipper Kev Pike “We can do this lads” than the Recent Leavers started to throw caution to the wind French style spreading it wide at every occasion (if ‘wide’ is possible on a pitch as narrow as a pool table) and scored 3 tries in the last 8 minutes winning 36-20.
The game was scrappy at the best of times. The ref admitted he had given up penalising the hands in the ruck for fear of hyperventilating from blowing the whistle too often. Along the way, the pre-season training finally caught up with Knowlers who may have been knocked out or may have just fallen asleep snoring quite happily on the ground like he does on most occasions, such as weddings, but usually with a ham on his head. Who knows?
The Growers left the pitch and in the words of the great Mark O’Laing ‘feeling like they had just been put in a tumble dryer on high speed and unceremoniously spat out’. The recent Leavers ended a 9 match unbeaten run for the Growers that had included memorable scalps such as the 13 men of Salisbury RFC 3rds in a extremely tight 70 point win; the too close to call encounter versus Teddington RFC 2nds where the Growers could only manage 72 points and; who could forget ‘The Battle of Imber Court’ where the growers just scraped a victory over Knutsford RUFC 83-5.
Onwards and upwards. Milton Abbey Old Boys on Remembrance Sunday. Congratulations to the Recent Leavers. We hope to see you all playing for the Growers soon.

DW.