Clifton 21 Bishop's Stortford First XV 19

While the quality of the rugby may not always have lived up to the occasion, this was a very hard-fought match, with no quarter asked or given.

Stortford started brightly, but their early threats were well contained by a hard-tackling Clifton side and, after 12 minutes it was the home side that registered the first score with a converted try from a driving maul, set up from a 5 metre lineout. This had arisen from a penalty close to the Stortford line for killing the ball at a tackle, for which offence flanker, Steve Ball was yellow-carded. The next major turning point was, unfortunately a serious injury to young Stortford number 8, Charlie Kingham, whose hip was dislocated in a collision with two opposing forwards. With Mark McCraith moving to his familiar position at 8 and Dave Aldam replacing him in the second row, the visitors bounced back well from this severe setback, but some poor handling and strong home defence frustrated a number of good efforts to get onto the scoreboard. Finally, though, some 27 minutes into the game, Stortford were able to force an attacking 5 metre lineout and, although the throw missed its intended target, quick reactions by prop, Sean Edwards saw him juggle the ball and plunge forward to secure it before dropping over the line for a try, which returning skipper, Tom Coleman had no difficulty in converting. Clifton surged back onto the attack, though and with their powerful forwards to the fore, supported by some threatening running from their backs, it took some tremendous close-quarters defence from the visitors to keep them out. After some 6 minutes of such pressure, though another forwards surge moved quickly to the left by the home threequarters saw winger, Sam Smith force his way over for a try close to the posts. The easy conversion took their lead to 14-7. This lead was doubled seven minutes later, when some uncharacteristically weak tackling in midfield saw Clifton’s powerful second row, Pen Purcell make a telling drive from halfway after which a few more phases of concerted driving play were all it took to produce another converted try on the stroke of halftime.

Stortford started the second half as badly as they had started the first well, making a complete nonsense of receiving the restart dropout, knocking on and then conceding a penalty at the scrum. Fortunately, though the penalty kick at goal from almost in front of the posts flew wide. The visitors now seemed determined to take advantage of this good fortune and progressively took control over large portions of the game, but were prevented from turning this into points by a number of small individual errors. Clifton’s tackling remained very strong and Stortford had to fight hard for every inch of ground gained but, repeatedly both forwards and backs threw themselves into contact and recycled the ball and eventually cracks started to show in the home defence. It was some 28 minutes into the half, however, before the first major turning point came, with a yellow card for a Clifton forward, following one of a number of penalties for breakdown offences – this one being right under their own posts. Stortford opted for a scrum against the weakened pack and a thrust up the middle from Ball created just enough room for substitute wing, Ross Bird to touch down out wide. Sam Coleman’s attempted conversion from the touchline went only narrowly wide. Ball again led the way some 5 minutes later, when his initial drive was backed up by his threequarters, with fullback, Nick Hankin to the fore to commit the stretched home defence and provide a scoring pass for openside, Richard Gill. Coleman junior this time made no mistake with the conversion to take the scoreline to 21-19. Stortford continued to have the better of the game, but Clifton briefly found some of the cohesion in attack, which had been a feature of their first half and should have finished the game off with another try out wide, but over-elaborated, causing the scoring pass to be thrown forward. Buoyed by this let-off, Stortford threw themselves back onto the attack – albeit much of it from their own half – but were unable to break down again the stubborn Clifton defence. The home side, nevertheless, were clearly very happy to kick the ball dead as soon as time ran out, to secure the very narrow win and retain their place at the top of the league.

This game marked a clear reversal of fortunes from the previous two weeks, when Stortford had threatened to squander winning leads and today turned chasers, failing only narrowly to overhaul the 21-7 halftime deficit. While the last minute draw two weeks previously against Ampthill had felt like a defeat, this loss felt almost like a win to many of the travelling supporters and should send the team into next week’s game against Cambridge in good heart.

The encouraging news on Charlie Kingham on Saturday night was confirmation that the hip had spontaneously "relocated" itself and an X ray had not disclosed any fractures. He is to stay in hospital overnight and have a further scan in the morning, which will determine whether he can be released to travel home. More news will be posted on the Club website as it is received.