Two for two, choo choo🚂

The Hammarby team that made their way to Fyrisfjädern on Saturday morning arrived prepared and excited, luckily, so did the Plebs. We made a few changes in the squad from last week, the last of them happening on Saturday morning as Nicklas Larsson got moved onto the bench to replace Per who was ill. 

There were a few mistakes in the warm up, and it is possible that Uppsala weren’t 100% switched one when we made the field. This however wasn’t noticed as loosehead prop Ryan beat one defender and managed to free a hand for an offload to captain James Oakley, who ran the length of the field scoring his first of the day, only a few minutes after the starting whistle. Hammarby were determined to not let this be the tone of the gain, and after the restart they pressured Uppsala greatly, eventually finding themselves on our five meter line. Uppsala won a turnover but a slightly too short clearance kick gave Hammarby the ball again. After the following lineout James forced a fumble by his opposite number, kicked the ball on and chased his kick. Sadly the ball was knocked on, but we found ourselves with a defensive scrum in Hammarby’s 22. Uppsala’s defence was the real star of the day, with high line speed and disciplined low tackles, Hammarby really struggled to build much in attack. When the ball was turned over, Uppsala resorted to our structures, in which our dynamic team were able to repeatedly create and exploit holes in the defence. It did not take long before James found another gap, extending the lead to 10-0. 

As Hammarby realised that keeping ball in hand wasn’t getting them far, they resorted to more kicking. This was successful a few times and they gained some territory but the vast majority was shut down by the back three, who all had an excellent game. Kicks to relieve pressure therefore quickly turned to defending well weighted high balls or riveting counter attacks. The back three was not only excellent in defence, but both our Spanish backfield players, Saul Davalos and Diego de Maria scored tries in the first half. The latter was beautifully converted by the other winger, Gustav Porse. When the referee blew the whistle for half time the score was hence 22-0 in our favour. 

We kicked off in the second half, and quickly regained possession of the ball. Hammarby had however switched on during halftime, at the same time, we kept making mistakes, as a result we were stuck in their 22 for the best part of 10 minutes. This was until James found a lovely inside ball from Willhelm, putting him over for the first score of the half. It is around this point when players started to come of the bench, the quality however did not dip. When it came to scrum time the addition of prop Nathan Ours and lock Nicklas Larsson transformed the struggling scrums into a dominant weapon. The other replacement lock, Noah, was seemingly inspired by Jack Smith as he tackled anything that moved. With fresh legs from the bench, it did not take long until gaps started appearing in the defence, two of these were exploited by James, and centre Otto Klintenberg who both scored tries of similar fashion. The score was now 39-0 with about 10 minutes of play time left. Hammarby seemed determined not to leave empty handed and came flying out of the starting blocks at the next kick off. A few penalties from Uppsala provided them both possession and territory. The Uppsala defence stayed strong however, in many instances pushing the opposition backwards, only to have a fault in discipline undo the progress. As the clock ticked into the red Hammarby were slowly gaining momentum, before one final hit from the Uppsala pack dislodged the ball, allowing for it to be kicked out. The final whistle blew, Uppsala had one 39-0. 

There were many outstanding performances as well as many points to improve on. A special mention must be given to Anes Mohammad, who made his debut for the Plebs when he came in onto the wing. James Oakley was understandingly named man of the match. We new recover and start preparing for the coming two weeks, first with the Nomads facing Exiles C on 1/ 6 and the following week the A-side will travel to Gubbängen for their first away game and second game against E

xiles B.