Sat 16th Sep 00

Ampthill Extras 45  -  Vauxhall 2nds 21

15      Kevin Smith                           1   Brian Geary 

14      Aiden Harrington                  2   Brian Todd         

11      Gary Bass*                            3   Wayne Peck

13   Steve Marsden                     4   Terry Norford  ‡

12   Ian Burgess                            5   Andy Morgan  #

10   Dave Ratcliffe                         6   Liam Duffin (c)

9     Ian Burgess                              7   Ray Nix

8   John Roberts

 16     Justin Cobley ‡  (half time)       17     Jamie Dix  * (50 mins)

 18     Paul Farthing #  (Half Time)      19 John Lasbry                      

 Tries:    Aiden Harrington, Ian Burgess, Gary Bass, Liam Duffin, John Roberts (2), Justin Cobley        

Cons:    Steve Marsden (5)

 In this the Extras first game of the season in front of the club the Ampthill spectators were treated to another emphatic victory from the boys in black.

 From the start the Extras looked the stronger team. There was some fine running from the backs including a superb catch and run from ‘Trigger’ Bass who caught the ball on his wing and carved up the centre of the pitch before running into the thick of the Vauxhall players. Not to be selfish, Gary refused to break through the Vauxhall defence he came upon, instead he shipped the ball to ‘Smudger’ Smith enable him to experience the Vauxhall’s tackling abilities.

 It took about a quarter of an hour until the Extras finally broke Vauxhall to get their first try. It was Aiden Harrington that crossed the line after some swift ball movement from the backs.

 Soon after a juggled ball from Smudger was eventually caught and passed to Trigger to cross the line for his first touchdown of the season.

 Ian Burgess was next to score, the skill and teamwork in the backs was now starting to pay dividends.

Scouse gave the forwards their first points of the game when he powered over from short range shortly before the break. With three successful conversions from Steve Marsden it was 26 – 0 going in to half time.

 After a score by Scouse at the beginning of the second half the Extras seemed to go to sleep. Vauxhall started to take advantage of the napping Extras and at one stage had eased their deficit to just 10 points.

 The referee not to be outdone by the performance of these two sides decided to take the limelight by issuing a red card to the Vauxhall prop. This came about when Wayne Peck who was ‘guesting’ for the Extras decided to unleash his handbag on his opposite number. There was some pushing and shoving in which the ref found himself pushed and had no alternative but to issue his nice new shiny red card to dismiss the culprit. 

With Vauxhall down to 14 players Liam Duffin took advantage of the now uncontested scrums and positioned himself wide on the wing for an Extra’s scrum 20 yards from the Vauxhall line. Ian Browning at scrum half moved the ball out to Ratty who then released Liam to leave him only the wing to barge out to cross the line for his first of the season.

 Soon after Justin Cobley charged to the line like a salesman to a garage selling petrol to put the game out of the reach of Vauxhall.

 With only a few moments to go the ref produced his second card of the game to sin-bin a Vauxhall player for verbal abuse. 

There were a couple of notable incidents during the game; one was Ratty’s three consecutive knock-ons within the space of as many minutes. There was also the malicious wounding of Toddy carried out on Toddy by his own teammate Brian Geary. No one seems sure as to what this was about but it is rumoured by many that it was a deliberate attempt by Geary to eliminate Toddy from the Extras Big Brother competition.

 Next week the extras should have a real tester away against Kettering.