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The old adages.. You can only beat what’s in front of you and a win is a win, certainly rung true about West’s 3^rd pre-season game away to Sully View RFC. With a stern test expected against a team that finished 3^rd place in their league last season, but as with many things it did not materialise. The pre-match preparation and warm up didn’t start well with Sully informing West that they would be starting the game with passive scrums which nullified the prowess of our frontrow players Craig Weaver, Scott Leonard, Beppe, Duane Gardner & Jonny Coleman.

The 1^st half kicked off and started as bad as the preparation, with dropped passes, wrong options and little structure before centre Luke Royal crashed over for the opening try. Those that thought it would settle West and allow them to play their gameplan were sadly disappointed as the mistakes kept on, but credit to West, they stuck at it and with new signing Alex Maddocks making some hard runs and Dukey & Connor Witcombe combining well in the backrow they scored another 2 tries through winger Alex Willcox and secondrow convert Gareth Moorcraft.

Some truths were told at halftime and this seemed to have an improvement, with the players coming out for the 2^nd half with more of the structured game plan we have seen in the previous 2 games. With some hard running and the ball coming out wide to the wingers it was only a matter of time before a try arrived and didn’t it just.  With young Jake Wells picking up the ball in his own 22, he decided to run past or around every Sully player before touching down under the sticks, converting himself.

With West’s fitness and physicality starting to show as in the previous 2 games, the tries soon followed, with debutant Morgan Parry crossing, soon followed by winger Kaine Jones scoring his 1^st for the club. West were now really starting to up the tempo, speed of the game and make their superior fitness tell with Luke Royal scoring his second after a 50m run, converted by Captain Robbie Baldock. Then Mark Leighton who had switched onto the flank from centre tackled a Sully player, took the ball off him and with a monstrous handoff on the fullback crashed over too, converted by Robbie. After more good interplay between the forwards and backs, Jake Wells scored his second try and then put Tom Jarvis in for a try converted by Robbie to complete the rout.

It shows how far this team has come that the players were disappointed with the performance despite the scoreline and with Trinant up next in our league opener, the players know the level and effort expected of each and all. 

Also thanks to MG, craig, tom, dean and alex for helping out sully at different stages of the game.