Bedford Blues 48 Bishop's Stortford 1st XV 10

Up against a massive Bedford pack, Stortford struggled for possession throughout the first half but showed massive commitment and no lack of skill in a battling defensive performance. The defence was breached after 6 minutes, when a midfield penalty to the home side was brilliantly kicked by flyhalf, Will Hooley for a 5 metre lineout. Stortford managed to hold a couple of forward drives - an achievement in itself against such a huge pack - but, having sucked in the defence through a couple of midfield thrusts, a pinpoint crosskick by Hooley found his right winger, who merely had to catch and flop over for an unconverted try. Within three minutes, though the visitors levelled the scores with an incisive backs move, as George Cullen made a half break to feed Sam Winter, who charged forward and gave Rob Duff just enough room to barge over through his opposite number's tackle to score out wide. That was pretty much it as far as possession for the visitors was concerned for the rest of the half. They struggled to win the ball even on their own ball at both lineout and scrum and conceded a string of penalties at the latter. Two such at successive Stortford put-ins took Bedford into the opposition 22 and a quick tap saw their no. 8 over for a converted try near to the posts after 19 minutes. The visitors' travails at the scrum produced a final warning to the front row and, with 28 minutes, Dec Caulfield's first involvement, after replacing Sam James at hooker was to receive the team sanction and get an immediate 10 minutes' rest. Further tries to Bedford duly followed on 33 and 40 minutes, the latter going to a promising debutant, named Ben Foden! The conversion of the second score took the halftime scoreline to 31-5.

Halftime substitutions seemed to work out in Stortford's favour, with a couple of Bedford giants being replaced, resulting in a much more even spread of possession for the second period. The visitors started strongly but were unlucky to lose Johnny Neville very early on to a potentially serious head injury. Our best wishes go to Johnny for a speedy recovery. After a long delay while the injury was dealt with, George Keen returned to continue what was an impressive performance in the centre. Despite then running through many phases of 15-man rugby, Stortford found the home defence was also very strong. Eventually, a couple of crucial handling errors produced a turnover in midfield and a great line run by the home fullback saw him burst through the first line of defence and he had the skill and pace to beat two covering defenders to make the line for another converted try after 12 minutes. Eight minutes later the home backs again showed their class with an excellent grubber kick by a centre being fielded by their flying left winger and, despite a great cover tackle from Tom Walker, the ball was recycled quickly for a try in the corner to Tom Hitchcock - one of Stortford's Colts last season, who appeared for our Blues the previous night against Hertford! Five minutes later, it was Walker's turn to register a well-deserved try for last season's Colts, when he took a perfectly-timed pass from Jimmy Rea to round off a period of sustained pressure, which even Bedford's well-organised defence could not counter. The home side, though had the final word, when James Lennon (on as a second half replacement for Lee Dickson), who appeared a number of times for Stortford last season on loan from Bedford's Academy, showed his pace to round off some sharp passing by his threequarters with an unconverted try out wide.