After a long summer of off-season in the gym and five weeks of preseason culminating with a 36 hour excursion to the Brecon Beacons, the Blues faced their first opposition of the season, Richmond Away. This would be a real test and a great opportunity to put the detail and shapes we’ve been honing in pre-season into practice. Conditions weren’t fantastic: warm but with a constant drizzle. The RAG looked beautiful under lights.
Straight from kick-off, the tempo of the game was insane: line speeds from both sides were electrifyingly fast. Balls were fizzing left and right, neither team able to gain an advantage. Richmond were dominant in the scrum, helped in part by their vastly experienced front row. The set piece seemed to be what separated the two teams - the Blues struggled to maintain possession in the wet conditions and a flurry of scrum penalties meant that, despite a lovely team try finished by Noah Miller, Oxford went into half time 21-5 down.
Having been amped up by Kench and Wyllie in the break, the team came out for the second half all guns blazing. We were ferocious in defence, with a dominant tackle almost every phase, and the sheer brute force of the pack in attack meant that Richmond were scrambling. The momentum was all Oxford’s: lovely tries from Danny Stokes and Fergus Dick took the Blues to within two scores. After an awesomely dominant breakdown, Sam Line sniped and finished excellently to bring us ever closer. Oxford’s physicality both in attack and D was overawing Richmond and Wolfe Morn went over in the 80th minute to bring us within a conversion of levelling the match. Unfortunately, this wasn’t quite enough to get us a win, but, after being 16 points down at half time, the lads put on a really good show. Lots to be pleased with but lots to work on.
Thank you to Richmond for the incredible hospitality and hugely competitive first outing.
(Match report: Vivek Ramen)
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