The Army Senior Men got their 2022 Inter-Services Championship campaign off to the best possible start on Saturday afternoon with a 35-20 win over the RAF at a sundrenched Kingsholm.
Gloucester’s new artificial surface has enhanced the Premiership outfit’s reputation for running rugby and the Army showed that they, too, are capable of an all-court game with ambitious attacking rugby combined with physicality and line speed in defence.
For Capt Will Reeve (HQ 4X), the match marked his first Senior Army cap, the full back having had his previous attempts to make the squad disrupted by the Covid pandemic and pursuing career ambitions – even if they did bring him international Sevens and XVs caps for Kenya along the way.
Having come close before, the full back says that the experience more than lived up to his expectations.
“I’ve been on the fringes of this for years and years,” he said, “and for a couple of different reasons it meant that I was able to absorb all of this without the climax, but now to be on the inside is such a special feeling.
“What a day for a game of rugby, what a surface and what a stadium. My wife and new daughter were in the stands with other members of my family, and it was a special bunch of boys to share this with. Some of them have been in a red jersey longer than I’ve been in the Army, and have welcomed me into the ‘capped’ gang.”
Capt Reeve was one of nine new caps awarded by Head Coach Capt Mal Roberts (RLC), and he says that having more than a third of the match day squad being new to this level and deliver the kind of performance showed the level of credit which needed to be paid to the management.
“Those nine new caps were split three and six, with three in the starting team and the rest on the bench, and that’s a really good indication of what’s been done over the last few months,” he said.
“The context of this is that Army rugby stopped in 2020 and we’ve had nothing since, and we cast the net as wide as practical in October 2021, and the new boys have put their hand in the air to be counted.”
The team was led from the front by Capt Jamie Miller (AAC), who put in an eye-catching performance at number eight, no more so than in his contribution to the game-clinching second half score finished off by Spr Jack Johnson (RE).
“I’m hugely proud,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming after the hiatus. We’ve had a long time to prep but to get it right on the day felt great.
“We said after the game that there are lots of things we can train, but some things you can’t train as well and we had those in abundance. There was lots of graft, hard work, desire, and getting off the ground to make a difference. That’s the stuff you can’t teach and was really pleasing.
“This has been three years in the waiting and you can never underestimate the RAF. They put a shift in today and worked us hard for 80 minutes.”
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Words © New Dogs, Old Tricks
All images © Army v RAF Match – Alligin Photography, Cat Goryn, Lee Crabb and Neil Kennedy
