Bishop's Stortford 1st XV 13 Clifton 10

Early adventure by Stortford, giving them territorial dominance was spoilt by individual errors and Clifton took full advantage after 5 minutes. Having stripped a Stortford player of the ball as he crossed the Clifton try line, the visitors broke out of defence with power and a penalty for offside was forced under the Stortford posts. The home defence was caught dozing, as prop, Ellis Genge ran fully twenty yards before taking a tap and plunging the remaining 10 yards over the line for a try easily converted by 10, Charles Foley. The home side bounced back onto the attack and won a penalty under the Clifton posts, which flyhalf, Olly Walker easily converted on 8 minutes after his team had blown a big overlap opportunity out wide. Stortford almost immediately escaped unpunished for being caught offside well inside their own half, when Foley pushed his shot at goal wide of the posts after 10 minutes. The pendulum now swung back in Stortford’s favour, as they enjoyed another good spell of attacking pressure and forced the visitors to collapse a maul driving hard at their line, for which their 5, Joseph Quinn was yellow-carded. Opting for a scrum, Stortford took full advantage of the handicapped Clifton pack to drive over the line for 8, Steve Ball to touch down after 20 minutes. Walker’s conversion attempt into the blustery wind fell short. It took only 5 minutes for playing numbers to be equalised though, when home prop, Will Roberts was sin-binned for a breakdown offence under his own posts. This time Clifton took the 3 points to establish an 8-10 lead. Undaunted, Stortford went straight back onto the offensive and good ground by winger, Jono Child set up position, which his pack exploited to the full, going through a number of phases of close driving play, before hooker, Sam James touched down for another unconverted try to put his side back in the lead. The only other event of note in the half was another penalty shot at goal by Foley, which once again flew narrowly wide of Stortford’s right hand post.

The second half was completely dominated by the two defences which, combined with repeated handling errors by both sides, produced an exciting, but scoreless 40 minutes, with only three points dividing them throughout. The visitors probably enjoyed marginally the better of the territory over the period and, on a couple of occasions put the Stortford line under heavy pressure, notably from 5 metre lineouts. The home side defended these extremely well though - on one occasion shoving an attempted driving maul back some 10 metres to force a turnover. Stortford ended the game on the attack and, over the whole match deserved their narrow victory, having scored 2 tries to one. This result balances out the similarly close loss at Clifton back in September, which was probably equally merited, producing an even sharing of the overall spoils between two closely-matched teams.