Weymouth Warm Up

Portland made its first attempt to gather the faithful this weekend for a warm up game at South Shore, and yea verily, Coleridge was right, summer has indeed set in with its usual severity.

Nothing more to say about the numbers that hasn't already been said behind closed doors. It was what it was. Thirteen and later fourteen players were able to inconvenience themselves long enough to take the trip down to South Weymouth, while others attended to the sundry other distractions that can get in our way if we want them to.

Thanks to South Shore for treating the game in the spirit in which it was intended and for lending us a couple of players to fill in the gaps in our own ranks, and it was thusly equipped that we commenced the game of three 25-minute periods.

The South Shore pitch is a small one, with just enough room to land a couple of hundred geese apparently, and with a stiff cross-field breeze the touchlines too often came in to play and prevented much in the way of fluid play. Both sides were clearly reacquainting themselves with the rules, giving rise to numerous penalties and a staccato style of play that could not have been too easy on the eye of the spectators.

Lots of lineouts ensued, which themselves were often ugly slap-around affairs, not helped by different calls and some cross-cultural confusion in pronunciation. It'll all be alright on the night though.

Although South Shore opened the scoring with a penalty, Portland were first to cross the line when Jerry Alves created and then jinked through the kind of gap that only he could fit through. Evan made the conversion and thanks to some good Portland defense and circuitous running by South Shore backs, that's how the score remained for most of the rest of the period. At the very end however an optimistic kick ahead from South Shore bounced kindly for them, wrong footed our full back, and gifted them a score. 10-7 at "third time".

The second third was also pretty evenly matched, with Portland adding a try through a Francis crash ball, and a penalty of our own, while South Shore managed another converted score to level the game at 17-17.

Portland was able to put some daylight between themselves and the hosts in the third period, with 3 tries to South Shore's 1. A pair of conversions a-piece brought the final score to 34-24 in favor of the visitors.

A good showing by those who were there, but it's the not-showing that gave greater cause for concern.

Portland are at home to Seacoast this coming weekend, so expect the woodwork to be fully vacated.