team spirit, n.

A spirit of camaraderie, cooperation, and mutual support among the members of a group; prioritization of the collective interests of a team or group.

Although we’re still relatively early in the 2024/5 season, a couple of trends have started to appear. Quins have done pretty well at home with a two good wins but we have yet to win on the road. As a result, our record before this weekend was LWLW.

I’ve also spoken before about the depth of team spirit we have. The boys coming out of retirement, the work days taken as leave so players are available, the guys playing injured or out of position.

All of those were in evidence as we made our first ever (?) trip to Ashtead to play Old Freemens.

Having endured a horror show in 2023/4, Frees had skipped a league and come down from Counties 2 to Counties 4. That made them the ultimate unknown quantity. Had they found their level or were they in freefall?

This season’s results only clouded the question further: a mix of convincing wins, conceding walkovers and fair-sized losses.

In addition, the old boys’ teams we play against are a mixed bag. Some are the school 1st XV from three years ago all recently back from uni whilst others are made up of more … seasoned campaigners.

What was clear was that both teams were locked in the mid-table battle and this game was looking like a close one.

First objective then was to get a decent team out. Once again, Povey worked his magic; calling in favours and cajoling players to pull on the boots. The result was the return of some old faces around a solid core who’ve been there all season. The squad looked very capable of doing a job.

As the teams ran through their warm ups, it was clear that Frees were a mix of ages. The backs looked to be fairly recent school alumni whilst some of the pack had a few more miles on the clock. This one looked winnable.

Adding to the spice of the fixture was a fairly substantial slope and a crowd who were well lubricated after a lunch in the local pub. What they lacked in knowledge of the current laws they made up for in enthusiasm.

Receiving the kick off and playing downhill, Quins were the dominant team for the early part of the game. Again, we seemed to have eliminated our usual disciplinary errors with only single digits of penalties for offside and high tackles. It was also very obvious that the ref had more issues with Frees’ chat whilst Quins managed to keep him onside.

Whilst both lineouts were patchy, Frees had a slight upper hand in the scrum. However, our strong running and committed defence was keeping us on top and it was no surprise when Quins went 3-0 and then 10-0 up – Ben now making it two tries in three games.

Letting Frees in for a try took some of the shine off the first half but the general mood was that this was a game Quins were dominating – helped by a yellow card to Frees’ 10/playmaker for a nasty knee to the head.

But how many points was that slope worth? The rumours a halftime was 10 points. Had we built enough of a lead?

As the second half progressed, Frees’ gameplan became very clear – use the slope and pin us back. Wednesday’s training session catching high balls suddenly took on a new relevance and our back three were awesome; fielding everything and defusing bombs all half.

Another George penalty stretched our lead to 13-8 as Frees’ were getting under the ref’s skin more and more. But then the tide turned.

Frees’ backline started to click, their lineout started to function and slowly they dragged themselves back. The teams swapped penalties (16-8) before a Frees try made it 16-13. The conversion brought up a 1-point game with around 15 minutes still to go.

Now was the time to show heart. Now was the time to be clean in defence. Now was the time for that team spirit.

As Frees threw wave after wave at Quins, our defence held solidly. There were a couple of creaks but each time we were able to nab a turnover or force a knock-on.

With Harry playing a Captain’s role and getting under the ball for a held up try, the ref announced there were 30 seconds left.

A long goal line drop out gave Frees a last roll of the dice with a lineout around our 10m line. They won clean ball and started to work their way upfield before a spill in our 22 gave Quins the chance to kick the ball out and celebrate.

Make no mistake, this is a game we would’ve lost in previous seasons. We would’ve arrived with 15 rather than 18. Heads would’ve dropped when Frees started to come back. Frustration would’ve meant we argued with the ref meaning 50:50 calls go against us.

That none of this happened is no accident.

We now sit fourth in the league going into a rest week. Our opponents on the 9th are Southwark Lancers. Last year we shared the spoils and although they are a couple of places above us, their results are not dissimilar. They’ve beaten the teams towards the bottom of the table but lost to the teams around them. Plus two of their four wins have been walkovers.

A win for either team will leave them in the hunt for promotion.