Cambridge 14 Bishop's Stortford 27

Cambridge RFC vs Bishop's Stortford RFC 1st XV

Playing with the benefit of the strong wind in the first half, Stortford dominated possession and territory, scoring four tries – 2 from driving mauls, one well-worked down the left wing and the best of the bunch a great solo effort from Johnny Neville, dummying his way past several players over about 30 yards, before playing a one-two off a defender’s head (!) in attempting to find a teammate inside.

Cambridge fought back with a close-range try of their own just before half time and Tom Banks rounded off the half with a huge three pointer from inside his own half to take the score at the break to 7-27. The second half became a bit more disjointed, as both sides made personnel changes, but the home side found it much more difficult to exploit the tailwind and faced by a well-organised Stortford defence and some strong tackling had only one try to show for it. Although Stortford naturally found it difficult to build attacking pressure into such a strong wind, they managed to do most of their defending in midfield and did come close to a couple of tries of their own.

With the Blues having earlier drawn 19-19 with Cambridge IIs, despite suffering a series of injuries to their midfield backs, which inevitably caused considerable disruption , the many Stortford supporters went away very happy and looking forward to next week’s home fixtures with OAs and Hertford.