26/11 – Ossie has been in a silly mood all week, sniggering like Mutley, chortling about Piddles and Puddles

. That’s because I’d slated this Saturday to visit one of the rugby clubs on my bucket-shop list, Puddletown RFC, who play on a pitch behind the Piddle Brewery just south of Piddlehinton. A 50-odd mile round trip, and probably the last “major” excursion for a while now, as the days are shortening and the weather growing increasingly wintery.
The trip down I am beginning to know well, south across the Blackmore Vale to Sturminster Newton, through the town and keep on going towards the coast, past King’s Stag and down the River Piddle valley. A typical cold autumnal Dorset scene, heralding the end of the year, blue-grey skies above an orange horizon, pierced by glistening yellow shafts of sunlight above faded green fields and stark copses. Plus a bevy of typical Dorset kamikaze pheasants meandering across the middle of the road round every turn

. We have seen an extraordinary number of cock and hen pheasants on our countryside jaunts of late; they are certainly not an endangered species, motor cars not-withstanding.
Puddletown RFC is helpfully signposted off the Dorchester road, left up a lane into a trading estate - which turned out to be vast, and that initial signpost was the only signpost mentioning the club. The estate is called Enterprise Park, but certainly isn’t modern; I have an old Ordnance Survey map which shows the location as a sort of army camp. Most of the smaller units looked like old Nissan-style huts; of the brewery and the rugby club there was no trace, but I did discover amongst other trades a large John Deere agricultural machinery outlet, a glass fibre works, a print shop, a members gym, and a canteen called “The Griddle on the Piddle”

. After 10 minutes or so driving around, I reached the outer edges of the estate on top of an incline, and spotted behind me a single rugby pitch; it took me a further 5 minutes to work out how to access it.
The club have converted one of the ubiquitous Nissan huts into a changing room block, and have also managed to construct a small clubhouse alongside it. This might have been a fairly recent development as the inside walls were all rough-hewn wooden planks. The tables were also rough-hewn wood, surrounded by blue bar-style chairs, and there was an ancient sofa against one wall. One must also not forget to mention the Jolly Roger skull-and-crossbones bunting criss-crossing the floor and the two inflatable seagulls suspended from the ceiling …..
One problem at this level of rugby, one off the bottom, is that sometimes clubs can’t muster sufficient players to fulfil a fixture – if this happens, the game is recorded as a Home or Away Walk-Over and the errant club receives a penalty of 5 league points. The opposition, Lychett Minster RFC seconds (from down Poole way) have already fallen foul of this rule twice this season, so I was a little bit perturbed to find that by 2:15, only 10 players had made it to the ground, and the coach was frantically ringing round on his mobile. In the event, 13 players made it by the start (around 2:40, I don’t think kick-off times mean a great deal down this way) and Puddletown sportingly loaned them “Gary”, much to the amusement of the home supporters

, so we played 14 vs 14.
As for the game, Puddletown started how they meant to go on, carving through their opponents defence – it would have been nice to have said elegantly, but that wouldn’t have been the right word. In fact the first half delivered a master-class in how to engineer mistakes, and the home side’s 29-0 interval lead could have been a lot more if they hadn’t dropped the ball twice in front of an open try-line. Pick of the action was a quick throw-in by a Puddletown player, who completely by mistake threw the ball to an opponent; the opponent was so startled

, he ran 10 yards in the direction of the try-line, then stopped as he had absolutely no support from his own players, and promptly booted the ball into touch. And a try by Puddletown’s no.11 who ran 20 yards while desperately trying to offload the ball to a fellow attacker, managed to stumble his way through three missed tackles, and finally collapsed over the line

.
Lychett Minster conceded a further 7 tries in the second half, but did manage to force their way over for a try of their own, before the referee called time on the match seven minutes early.
Prior to the game, the Ostrich had had time to wander round the nearer parts of the trading estate, looking for the micro-brewery, and indeed did discover outside “Unit 1” a stack of around 100 beer kegs, which appeared to have originated from various other breweries including West Sussex, London, Stourbridge and Bude! However there was no activity at the unit, nor at the two alongside it (identified as Units 12 and 26, for some obscure reason) which also were surrounded by barrels. A crestfallen Ossie

, but his spirits were more than raised when the rugby club’s bar was thrown open at half-time, and a whole array of Piddle Brewery bottles were found to be on sale. The bird quickly liberated one as a souvenir of the day!
Dorset & Wilts 2 South (Level 9): Puddletown RFC 66 Lychett Minster RFC II 7
No admission or programme, mug of tea £1, bottle of Piddle Premium Ale* £3, attendance 28
* “What are you waiting for? Join the real ale revolution at the top. The Dorset legend, a thing of beauty, Crafted in Dorset’s Piddle Valley – 4.1%”