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Sunday 6th July 2008: Maidstone Pumas 7 Watford Cheetahs 42

Pumas Drowned

On what turned out to be a pretty miserable day weather and game wise, Maidstone Pumas travelled to leafy Watford, for the first of their two ‘out of conference’ games.

Watford Cheetahs is the new name of the old Chiltern club, who had changed their name in the previous off season to reflect the move to Watford.

Prior to the game, despite the efforts of the Pumas management, only 16 players showed up. The Pumas are injury ridden at the moment, with the latest casualty being wide receiver Richard Dowling, who had broken a bone in his left hand.

With Pumas players playing both offence and defence, a sudden burst of heavy rain, dampened proceedings just before kick off. The rain would then continue for much of the game.

Both teams started brightly with defence on top. However, Watford struck first when veteran Canadian Frank Mayo ran back a decent Anthony Malyan punt for the opening score. Typically in the run back, Tight End Billy Robertson was injured and had to sit out the remainder of the game. Robertson ended up in Hospital on Sunday evening, but he left with reasonable news and should be fit to finish the season.

Peter Crawley stretched Watford’s lead, but then The Pumas offence clicked with Quarter back John Bowden hitting Anthony Malyan on a 40 yard 4th down gamble from Coach Ted Smith. This was followed by some strong running by Rhys Herring and Steve Berry, which set up a 12 yard strike from Bowden to Malyan. Malyan stepped up and kicked the point after.

As the rain increased – Watford took advantage of Pumas mistakes. With so many players out of position, this was inevitable. With just under two minutes of the half remaining and Watford up 36 – 7, Thunder and Lightening stopped the game. Both teams and supporters retreated to the club house to shelter from high winds and torrential rain.

After the delay, both teams emerged to a water logged pitch which made playing difficult. Watford scored once more before the game petered out with lots of mistakes.

Coach Smith added “What a miserable day, both weather wise and with a severe lack of players. Congratulations to Watford who continued to play hard and we wish them well for the remainder of the season. Coach Lear and I would like to thank the team, for sticking with it. With many people hardly able to take a breather. I also thought the Officials handled the weather conditions really well and managed to ensure everyone was safe when the weather took a turn for the worse.

“However, we have a game next week, a visit to Essex to play the Spartans, who we beat in the first game of the season. It is going to be tough with us losing 3 players from today’s group. However, we should be a little stronger with a number of players returning from injury and enforced breaks”.

In additional news, General Manager Stuart Crowley added “We have been in discussions with a series of local Maidstone businesses, in an effort to generate sponsorship for the club. One or two of the leads are looking quite interesting and we should be able to go public within the next two to three weeks. These links are partly due to the coverage received in the Maidstone edition of the Kent Messenger.

We believe that, despite a couple of set backs on the field in the last couple of weeks, off the field we are starting to create an organisation to deliver real benefits”.

Maidstone Pumas will be attending the Kent County Council sponsored Teacher alternative training day on Wednesday 9th July. 13 local teachers representing 10 schools will be taught the non contact version of the sport; Flag Football.

The club are building upon these successes and are still looking for players (youth and senior) and coaches to assist with the 2008 campaign and beyond.

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