On a warm, sunny, perfect afternoon for rugby at Twyford Avenue the Wasps Occys came face to face with London Japanese. They arrived a few short so it was decided that we should play 13 a side with rolling subs. We are not entirely sure who scored and when but this is a rough summary of the game.

The first 20min was all London Japanese; wave after wave of attack came in as their fly half and centres showed slick movement and hands but fantastic tackling by Wasps, notably Chato at outside centre and Tony Lynch and Nick Rogers in the scrum, kept us in the game. Then the tide turned, they began to run out of ideas and the Occys kept plugging away. The new half back combination of Nick Woolf (playing his first game in 12 years) and Seb started to click, we got a roll on, and better organisation saw Wasps take more control of the game, with the centres Santi and Chato punching holes in the Japanese defence backed up by an eager pack getting to the breakdown.

Thomas on the wing made a number of breaks and scored a brace (and converted a few tries too), Andrew Rogers came on at half time, hotfooting it from a baptism, but his time in church paid off as he crossed the whitewash twice too. Glen was thrilled to score his first try for the Occys, and seemed just as proud of his fat lip and stud marks across his forehead. Man of the match Nick Rogers also scored twice - the first a break through the pack and the second saw him chase the length of the pitch to make a last ditch tackle virtually on our try line to save a certain Japanese try; he then leapt to his feet, ripped the ball from the splattered Japanese player and proceeded to run the entire pitch to score – the stuff dreams are made of (but he is half the age of most of our players). This caused the Japanese heads to go down and the game very much turned in our favour – we nilled them at half time.

Gaps opened up all over the park in the second half and although this saw the oppo score twice, the result was never in doubt. Nick Woolf went off injured and Callixte moved from the wing to scrum half and with his gallic flair started making more and more of his tell tale breaks resulting in tries. Seb was often the creator and unlucky not to score himself. Bert, our new St Lucian player, came on and off and contributed well both in the pack and backs. Our scrum dug in time and time again against a surprisingly tough Japanese pack (who also won all of their line outs). We even managed an eight man shove which reaffirmed our dominance. Special credit should go to the Stefano (also on his debut), Dan and Gideon from their team. Wayne, needs to now change his name to super sub, he was on and off all game filling in where needed and putting in a couple of great tackles. Santi had a great game at centre / fullback and lead the backs superbly, but most importantly of all Justin did a great job leading his troops, and was at the heart of everything all game – with a level of commitment that is hard to ignore. We even lent them one of ours, the giant Pole, Dominik, who played with his customary dedication and good humour.

A hard fought game was won comfortably and everyone to a man did the Occys proud.