Dave Bailey contemplating the night before and 80 hard minutes ....

COVENTRIANS 9 - 3 WARWICKIAN - Mids West 5 (South)

Covents kick off their league season today and our record v Warwickian in league fixtures is P12 W10 L2 add to that our record against them when they were Old Warwickians P19 W8 L11 gives us P31 W18 L13.

Our first ever league fixture v Old Warwickians was in our first and championship winning Warks 3 season on the 10th October 1987 when we went down 10-9 away in very controversial circumstances Clayton Flick weighing in with a try, penalty and conversion.

A Win's a Win

So says the old adage and the paper will say so on Wednesday too but make no mistake about it, this was more Atherstone High St than the Champs-Elysees with Covents finally coming out on top in a scruffy, at times ugly, scrappy arm wrestle that was not helped by an inept and completely curious performance by the man in yellow, holding a whistle. In fact it was credit to both teams that there wasn't a mass bout of handbags as Covents and Ws were left frequently frustrated by a failure to penalize the many obvious transgressions.

Warwickian took charge in the early exchanges and spent time near our line but sloppy handling meant they couldn't cash in. After 7 minutes winger Tom Evans left the field injured and Jason Platt (Jeff's lad) was fetched from the second team game to take his place. 5 minutes later, Ben Davies slotted a penalty in front for a 3 - 0 lead. This woke Covents up a bit and Rohan went on a trademark scorch down the left wing but as the Ws know him well, he was never alone in the match with seemingly everyone in maroon wanting to scrag him.

A word here about Dong and the Kerseley contingent - we were shouting "get your head down me cock" not "down on me ...." (you get the drift)

Back to scrappy forward play then and Vallis decided he'd had enough of the Ws forwards at a ruck so became the heaviest human torpedo in the world and sent one back to last week but was penalised for being off his head .... Errr I mean feet. After 20 mins, Ws were all over us like a cheap suit and twice we had to ground ball behind our line but repelled them all the same. Ws did finally achieve parity with a penalty and went in at half time 3 - 3.

Not much else to report until the 60th minute when charging warthog Lawrence stunned everyone by putting in a deft little kick mid gallop (who's been watching the World Cup then?) which nearly put Rohan in. On 64 minutes though we took the lead when Jason Ryan slotted a beauty for 6 - 3. This was about the time when the blue and white pack started to take control up front and this was celebrated by a bullocking wildebeest charge which gained about 15 yards but no points. It did however leave skipper Deej and Dave Bailey staggering and asking what day it was - not helped in Dave's case by a fairly liquid Friday night and no sleep. Who said we don't prepare properly for games?

On 70 minutes Jason again slotted for 9 - 3 and a minute later, Steve Vallis, sensing glory from a tap penalty set off on a charge but unfortunately there were still players from both sides on the floor exchanging phone numbers so Grumpy Gough tapped it out of his own player's hands to do the job properly. This only serves to underline what Mrs Vallis has always said about Steve being somewhat premature.

So the game started to draw to a close and Covents were very lucky not to concede when Ws thought they'd gone over in the corner - not grounded was the reason it wasn't given but it could've meant 5 points or worse - still, awarded it wasn't and that left us one more moment to savour with Grumpy Gough claiming Tit of the Match when attempting to take a high ball with all the time in the world. Hands out, feet apart, somehow it bounced and zipped straight through his legs with Goughy looking totally perplexed - done through the gate by Shane Warne's flipper much to the amusement of every single person on or near the ground.

The whistle finally blew and a tough tussle for supremacy came to an end. The handshakes were firm and the much improved Warwickian boys stayed for a few pints. It wasn't all doom and gloom though because this was the first time we'd won our first league game of the season since 23rd September 2006 17 - 8 away at Atherstone and also stretches our unbeaten league run this season to one game. It's something to build on and with the numbers that are training currently (25 plus) we can only move forward.

Just a quick mention for the 2nds who played a strong Cov Tech side on the bottom pitch and ran out gallant 32 - 10 losers. Great to see so many bodies in the club post match!