High possession levels, not enough scoring...

As Easter approached, we welcomed Hackney to Bishops Storford, and not so surprisingly, played half the game with snow falling. We looked on paper to have our strongest team of the season, and for once probably got the balance spot on with warming up, getting our game heads on, and then kicking off. We even won the toss!

They kicked to us with the wind at our backs, and the game quickly set into it’s pattern. As usual, we dominated at scum time and in the lineouts, our backs and their backs largely cancelled each other out, we clearly had the much stronger rolling mauls, and they edged the rucks.

The first 10 minutes were all pressure from us, but then following a couple of kicks and a scrum on our central 10meter line, their fly-half ran and stepped me completely much to my chagrin. Fortunately they did not convert. We then continued to have most of the dominant game plan, gaining a penalty kicked by Tom Bains. However, one of our main problems was losing the ball by getting isolated or knocking on and it was from this that Hackney took advantage to run up the right wing, combining with 3 players to score near the corner, which this time they did convert.

Realising they were certainly not going to get steamrollered by now, we set back with more determination, and largely controlled the rest of the half, finally scoring an excellent rolling maul from the 22 up the right hand touch line. It then ground to a halt 5 metres from their line, I called Slayer back to take an inside pass from me at 10, got ready to execute that to watch Aaron and Kev Stockdale pop out the back of the maul to run across the line unopposed. Tom was unlucky with the kick to just miss, pretty much leading into half time at 8 – 15 at which point even the ref said, “well they’ve made a silk purse out a sows ear, they’ve only been in your 22 three times” which summed up how I felt.

Half time came, and Dave Walker went, in order to be welcome his guests to his house, replaced by the equally large, and brilliantly named Josh Prime, and I requested Kev Stockdale took his leave to allow the more mobile Conrad to replace him round the field and in the lineout.

Off we went to the second half with our intentions realistically set on turning the score around. Possibly we were all trying too hard, certainly I was guilty of trying to force things to happen, but as when doing this more mistakes were made. I must admit to a general lack of memory of this half apart from 2 of my passes being nowhere near where they should have been, one of which thoroughly upset Spencer. Tom Bains kicked another penalty to take advantage of some of our territory, and they unfortunately scored enough times to give me plenty of practice at restarts, which at least went well.

Our efforts weren’t assisted by Brownie being accosted by 2 Hackney players. Josh jumped in to defend him, and was in turn retaliated against making 3 Hackney players guilty. The referee somehow missed all three of their players, and Josh being not tiny, and blood pouring from his nose was not difficult to spot, and so received a yellow card unlike any of their undetected place. Whilst the ref had sympathy, and later said what he thought would have been fair, he was bound by what he saw which was only our player so we had 14 for 10 minutes. All credit to Josh for defending a players being punched by 2 other players however.

In the end, silly mistakes on our behalf including poor passes, not calling for the ball and running into each other (twice), and from the side lines I was advised that they had a superb defence with excellent tackling.

Dick of the Day goes to the unfortunate Perry, who came on after 60 minutes, as they were taking a penalty at goal. He took it in the try area, to which I said, “it’s still live”, be it confused through my gumshield or not, he jogged out of the try zone, thought about touching it down on the pitch, then looked up, saw 4 players running towards him and ambled into them, from which they made a turnover and a quick try.

Man of the match went to Slayer for 2 reasons
1) He had an excellent game of scrummaging, running, tackling and mauling, and
2) He was one of 4 Stortford players in the bar when Hackney wanted to play their drinking games.

To sum it up, a game where the backs never really gelled, we made too many mistakes, tried too hard and Hackney played very well.

Chris