With the end of the season insight, we are in the middle of a two-part relegation battle. The battle is against the Canterbury Christ Church Chargers a team who, like us, have sustained a losing record throughout the season. Due to the league timetabling, our matches against them are the final two consecutive matches of the season. This meant that the loser of this series will get relegated to Division 2. Both teams were eager to get on with it, and the energy was the highest it has been all season.

The first game was at Fortress Harlington. The Chargers took the opening kick-off. The offence did not start off well on the first drive as we seemed destined for a three-and-out. However, one of the Canterbury players failed to cleanly field the ensuing punt, and we were able to capitalize on this mistake and recover the ball, which kept the opening drive alive. We marched on with powerful running by Jonas “Dreadnought” Eschenfelder all the way to their 10-yard line. Unfortunately, they managed to intercept a wobbly pass at their own two-yard line, leaving the Chargers with difficult field-position. Our vaunted defence came out of the gate hot almost getting a safety and forcing Canterbury to punt from inside their own yard line. The lack of space and the heavy pressure resulted in a blocked punt we recovered at their 15-yard line. From there a couple of passes and a QB sneak play resulted in us opening the score 8-0. We never slowed down from that point until the half, only allowing a single first down from the Chargers and scoring three more touchdowns thanks, to great passing by Ben “Big Red” O’Brien that made up for his earlier interception. This led to the score being 26-0 at the half.

Canterbury were somewhat able to neutralize the offence, but they could not find an answer to get past our defensive front eight, especially our nose tackle Michael “Drama Sec” Anyanechi. We kept stifling their QB by penetrating their offensive line that looked more like a sieve than a wall by the second half, which all culminated by Dom “RoadRage Gang” DeSilva recovering a fumble in the end zone for a touchdown. Also, special shout out to Nick “Daddy” Hoare for handling his first game at center with plenty of poise.

The final score was 40-0 in our favour, but this is only half the battle. Part 2 coming next week.

#BecomeImmortal