Heroes galore as Exiles enjoy fruitful season

albeit one that was cut short with the team on a roll and a place in the Middlesex Merit Table 4 play-offs booked after finishing third in the table.

The team played 21 matches, 13 in the league and eight friendlies. We won 13 fixtures, drew one and lost seven, though the stats do little to tell the story of what unfolded.

As ever if anyone wanted a game they were guaranteed a half, and it was good to see a number of long-time heroes returning for another season notably Barry Cousins, Steve Richards, Danny Ford and Rod ‘the Colonel’ Heffernan.

Kean Marden and Johnson Idowi both adapted well to new positions. Kean moved from the back to the front row and added accurate lineout throwing to his usual psychotic style of play. Johnson slotted into Kean’s role on the flank and took over Brendan O’Flaherty’s role for sniffing out tries close to the line.

BOF, last season’s player of the year, locked out the engine room when he could along with John ‘Scouse’ Harrison, Anthony ‘Efe’ Lynch and Nabil Imrit, once he was back from injury. Further forward Ash Spencer continued trucking on and along with Clayton Popchop ensured we had a solid front-row on most occasions.

In the backs Luis Coa maintained his improvement and showed why he’s the best thing from Peru to pitch up in west London since Paddington. Chris Fenn, Connor Wareham, Tom Mayrick, Alex Adide, Sam Smith, Matt Jones and Alex Brown all showed a turn of pace and the ability to exploit a gap, while Danny Ford and captain Jez Inson showed that the Andy Goode school of half-backs is continuing to turn out graduates.

A number of new faces came along, played their part and hopefully will be back next season. Charlie Davies at full-back, Lewis Jackson and Henry Davies in the three-quarters, while James Purrington was devastating in attack and defence no matter where he started in the back-row.

By Christmas we had won three and lost four in the league, but quickly rectified things with a home win over Hayes, 39-26, in our first match back after the festive period after Alex Brown got the ball rolling by squeezing over for the first try.

We continued our November friendly against Surrey Chargers, a mixed-ability squad of young players who we have met three times. It makes a refreshing change the pursuit of league points with contact dampened down for those who want it, scrums and lineouts and uncontested, but otherwise they are full-bloodied affairs and this match was another highly enjoyable afternoon for everyone involved.

Great credit must go to Ricky Spadavecchia and Paul Hoban for organising the fixtures and we look forward to continuing to develop this relationship further in the future.

In mid-February, a 19-14 win in the mud away to Bank of England was the most complete performance of the season, made all the more enjoyable because it was a double-header which we had to dig in to win. Two tries from Wareham and one from Mayrick allowed us to book our place in the play-offs.

A week later it was all defence, but a 22-12 win at home to Hampstead in a match that was moved due to the Heath being water-logged. Defence was the order of the day, but the four times we made it into their half we left with points, including the 10 minutes that Kavan Fitzpatrick and Abdou Traore were in the sin-bin together.

For the league that was that. There was a win and a loss in two more friendlies before the coronavirus brought about a premature end to the season that left all involved with the Exiles with a sense of frustration that a season that was coming to the boil was unable to run to its natural conclusion.