The prospect of a friendly against Broadmoor 2s had brought a number of willing volunteers from the bar and junior coaching ranks. Some of them turned up, step forward Messers Hayhow and Findlay, others, well others didn’t, while some established (if grimacing) faces such as Mr Jackson made a welcome return and joined up with youth in the form of a certain Mr Campbell.

We started in the unusual position of having subs available for both forwards and backs right from the start. We even had loads of waterbottles! In order to manage the vast resources at his disposal, captain Hailes decided to keep himself temporarily aloof from the fray.
Once again sporting their brand new shirts (the Firsts obviously not missing last year’s kit) the Fourths took to the field determined to improve on last week.

Broadmoor established an early dominace in the scrum, an unusal occurance to say the least – us generally having the best fatties around – from which the IVs struggled to recover.

The highlight of the game for Bracknell has to be Mr Hayhow’s runaway (and very speedy) bulldozer impression to get the Fourths their first points of the season. Combining with the equally grizzled Radders the pair demonstated once again that age and cunning beat youth and vigour by conspiring to send Mr Hayhow hurtling at great speed towards what appeared to be a 15 year Broadmoor Ten. Ignoring years of CRB and child protection training, they picked on the kid. Mr Hayhow claims to have heard the lad tell/ask/beg/plead his colleagues to “tackle him” but it was often too late as the Bulldozer repeatedly crashed over the gain line, and I might add, in that channel provided a very easy target for the less fleet of Bracknell’s forwards.

Broadmoor played a solid game to emerge deserved winners. Though currently in the division below the IVs it cannot be long before they join the IVs in Division A and we replay this fixture but with points at stake.