Caerleon provided a lovely sunny day for the 1st Leg of our annual (“plague & pestilence permitting” as Tansy put it) Winter Friendly against Caerleon RFC PC. Tansy welcomed all the players and thanked Gemma & Bernard for organising the teams for the day’s play. Tansy noted that Monkstone currently held the Winter Friendly Cup from the last time it was played in 2019/20.
Monkstone had brought a squad of 13 players – would that be unlucky? – after Mike Jones had to drop out due to a bug – not thought to be Covid.
The games got underway with the opening round of singles and it was very quickly apparent that Monkstone were taking a commanding lead in a number of games. This was confirmed at the end of the round with Monkstone taking 10 of the 12 games for a points lead of 20-4.
Worse was to come for Caerleon in Round 2 as Monkstone ripped through their doubles teams and took all of the 6 games for a points haul of 18-0 giving an overall points score at that stage of 38-4.
Caerleon were hoping that things couldn’t get any worse but Monkstone really had their tails up and, in the Round 3 triples, registered another clean sweep taking all 4 games and gaining another 20 points for a final points total of 58-4 and 20 games to 2.
It would be remiss not to expose Roger and Bernard as the 2 ne’er do wells who prevented a total whitewash.
Despite the ease with which Monkstone appeared to win, many of the games were closer than the score would suggest and all the games were played in a friendly attitude and good spirit – most of the spirit was in Gemma’s excellent Christmas cake which she generously provided.
And so its on to the 2nd leg to be held at Monkstone in two weeks time on 23 January 2022.
