Bishop's Stortford 1st XV 32 Taunton Titans 37

After early penalties were exchanged, Taunton took a grip of the set pieces for the majority of the first half, giving Stortford a particularly hard time at scrum time, turning over several home put-ins. Taunton are a physically strong side and they ruthlessly exploited the stream of quality possession, aided by some patchy home defending, some crucial knock-ons and yellow cards to home forwards, Sean Edwards and Richard Gill for breakdown offences. The visitors thus managed to run in 5 first half tries, of which two were converted. Tries went to hooker, Jon Gatford after 15 minutes, flanker, Dan Lee after 24 minutes, scrumhalf, Ollie Claxton, after 27 minutes and fullback, Gary Kingdom on the stroke of halftime. Their ability to run through or stand up in some poor Stortford tackling allied with excellent support play and some good patient handling through the phases deprived Stortford of the ball for a large proportion of the half. The best score of the half, however, went to centre, Alex Dancer, a new loan recruit from Cornish pirates, who after 33 minutes ran in from some 40 yards after quick turnover ball in their own 22 allowed winger, Jemba Bull to run 30 yards, before committing his opposite number and giving his centre a free run to the line.

Stortford came out after halftime with ears undoubtedly ringing from their teamtalk and looked an entirely different side. Halftime subs, Liam Caulfield in the second row and James Orbart at 10 both made very positive impacts, but the whole team seemed rejuvenated. The home cause was helped materially by a complete change of fortunes in the set scrums, which Stortford were suddenly edging. Scrumhalf, Arran Mahoney set the tone with an early half break, which was taken on by Nick Hankin, who fed winger, Josh Winter for his debut First team try after only 2 minutes of the half. The home side proceeded to play some of the free-flowing, fifteen-man rugby, which has been their trademark this season and suddenly it was Taunton that were under pressure, though they did manage to cancel out a Mark McCraith try after 46 minutes with a touchdown of their own (hooker, Gatford’s second) some 9 minutes later. The rest of the half was all Stortford, however, as they ran in three more tries. Two of these went to substitute hooker, Sam James, capitalising on some good driving play by the whole pack and the other was scored by Nick Hankin, who was on the end of some slick handling by the backline off good ball from some strong driving play by the forwards. Orbart was able to convert two of them. As Stortford had suffered in the first half, so Taunton were regularly penalised at breakdowns on the retreat in the second period and this resulted also in two yellow cards to forwards, which significantly aided the home cause. The final 4 minutes of the game, following Stortford’s 5th try were frantic and, with Taunton still down to 14 men, it took some stern defending by them to hold out a now rampant home team. They had, though, given themselves too much to do with their very disappointing first half performance and will be looking in future matches to cut out the individual frailties shown too frequently in that opening period.