The Hague Barbarians v RC Twente – 11th February 2023
The Hague Barbarians (the Junior cluster team comprising of players from VR-C and Wassenaar Warriors) played RC Twente in the third game of the 3rd phase of the season at one of our home grounds at Voorburg.
The Barbarians played with confidence from the go. 5 mins in and they scored our first try from a driving maul from a close range lineout (Sorry – missed who managed to get he ball down under the pile of bodies). 10 min later some quick thinking from Syme ter Bekke at the scrum put a dancing Diego Ventaja Viedma over in the corner. Krijn Elfrink nailing a excellent conversion with a very tight angle. Tollo put his own dancing shoes one and crossed over soon afterwards. Tijmen Pronk kicking the conversion to bring the scores to 19-0. Twente weren’t going to let The Barbarians have everything their own way and scored their first try from a very nice chip, chase and collect, touching down under the posts. They kicked the conversion bringing the half time score to 19-7.
The Barbarians were down to 14 players for the first part of the second half, Temelko Brown being yellow carded for deliberately hitting the ball forward. Twente carrying on where they left off and scored their 2nd converted try soon afterwards. Again we had 2 very evenly balanced sides with the defensive lines of both teams holding steady. The Barbarians broke the deadlock though with Tijmen crashing though and over the line. The conversion was kicked by Tijmen and the scores were now at 26-14. The Barbarians scored a couple of mins later with Iason Plaisier performing what is becoming a trademark technique for him and intercepting a pass on the Twente 22. Krijn kicking the conversion taking the score to 32-14. But Twente had the last word, again putting in a chipped kick and scoring the last try of the game.
Final Score: The Hague Barbarians 32 RC Twente 19
This was a confidence building win for The Barbarians. All the work and improved performances over the past couple of weeks paid off with a well deserved win for the team. The biggest difference were the way that they approached the game – they believed they could win from the offset and that showed. The whole team held steady and put in some amazing defensive tackles. We attacked more in the game as well, taking advantage of the dancing feet of the backs and some powerful breaks by the forwards.
We have a couple of weeks off and will be back playing our next game on the 11th March.
See you there!
Stephen Brown
Match reporter