Round 3 Officials, Team News, Scores

Ian Bibey will be a busy boy then.  Bedford Saturday and Pirates Sunday.

Still heck of a weekend's driving

Ealing Trailfinders team to play Bedford Blues at 19:45 on Friday 25th October in Round Three of the Greene King IPA Championship at Goldington Road: Nice to see Peter Lydon and Lewis Jones in the match day squad, but concerned that there is no replacement 10 on the bench, although Tommy Bell could move over I suppose. Once again, shocked at how few of the new signings are breaking into the match day squad. What was the point of going out and getting guys like Paul Grant if they aren't going to play?

15 Tommy Bell 14 James Cordy Redden 13 David Johnston 12 Harry Sloan 11 Reon Joseph 10 Craig Willis 9 Craig Hampson 1 Will Davis 2 Matt Cornish 3 Elliot Millar Mills 4 Dave McKern 5 Harry Casson 6 Kieran Murphy 7 Jordy Reid 8 Rayn Smid ©  

Replacements: 

16 Alun Walker 17 Jake Ellwood 18 Craig Trenier 19 Ben West 20 Andrew Durutalo 21 Jordan Burns 22 Peter Lydon 23 Lewis Jones

It amuses me that Ealing fans are concerned about their lack of cover for 10 on the bench when Bedford haven’t had a 10 available since the 7th minute of the first cup game! We also haven’t had any cover at hooker since the first game, so Robbie Smith has had to play 80 mins every game so far. Blues decimated by injuries atm, I make it 9 first xv players missing at the moment, at least 5 of which are amongst our most influential players. Small squad already showing up and I expect Ealing will put us to the sword like the cup game. So I wouldn’t worry about your lack of 10 cover on the bench!

Weather forecast for Sunday in Penzance looks quite good. Looks like it’ll be a sellout. Hopefully a great advert for Championship rugby lies ahead.
A great shame that TCD and Nico De Batista miss out but the home support should help make up for it.
Any thoughts from Geordie-land on the level of travelling support? I know of 2😁

Edited by cheshire exile - 25 Oct 2019 at 17:58

Edited by Fat Albert - 25 Oct 2019 at 14:09

That's not THE Kevin Barrett playing at scrum-half for Ampthill, is it?  He must be 40 now - I remember chatting to his mum at London Irish when he was first breaking into the first team there in the early 00s - although I think that still makes him younger than Lutui and Molitika.

Statbunker seems to think he is 39.

One of the poorest games of rugby I’ve ever seen at GR tonight. Looks like it wasn’t much better around the league. Conditions were poor which explains some of it but even so both teams were absolutely lacklustre. The main point of difference was Ealing’s superior scrum which gave them ample opportunities to just keep Bedford pinged back and they scored a couple of mauls. It’s almost as if signing all of your props from the division below isn’t a great idea.

At the moment, I look at the fixture list and I just can’t see where our next win is coming from. I don’t think we’ll win another game before the next block of cup games. We need our injured players back ASAP, especially either of the fly halves and Alex Penny (who I think is out until the new year). It’s no coincidence that blues resurgence in form the last few years has been whilst having a bit of depth in the front row. Parilli-Ocampo and Ben Cooper have been our back up props and are both excellent players, Cooper in particular would start for most teams. We haven’t signed proper replacements for them or Charlie Clare and currently all of our front row options, McCarthy aside, are out of their depth. Similar to before Cooper returned and our scrum was a walking penalty. You just can’t win games when every knock on essentially offers a try scoring opportunity (from a scrum/pen/maul) to the opposition.

Westcoaster wrote: Excellent game in Jersey 27-0 win for the Reds. Proper old school tough game this, Donny had almost all the possession for the first half hour and turned down three easily kickable penalties. Jersey did well to keep them out and weren't offering too much themselves while the play was in the wrong half.  Still 0-0 after 39 minutes but then 8-0 Jersey at half time. A strong wind did its best to make life difficult but other than this, there were two key points for me. When the two starting props for Donny Quigley and former Jersey player Marc Thomas departed on 44 minutes - seemed very early - it made a significant difference and Jersey were stronger in the pack from then on  And the defence was outstanding, summed up in the final seconds when Donny had a shed load of multiple phase but only went backwards. I think it was Brendan Cope who finally secured the turnover and sealed a solid 5 point win for the Reds.  Made up a bit for the stuffing we had at Ealing last week

well done the reds.....I don't think you were stuffed by us last week. You were the better team by far in the 2nd half