Royston 2’s (31) vs Bishops Stortford 4’s (12)

Stortford lost the toss and Royston opted to play the first half down the hill with the wind.

Tom Brady got us underway with a high kick hanging in the wind and Stortford immediately applied pressure on Royston pining them in their half for the first few minutes of the game.

After some tight play in the forwards the ball emerged on the Royston side of the ruck and one of their backs chipped the ball over the top with the wind. The ball was chased down and the chasing back took advantage of the awkward bounce and ran over for the try.

The try was totally against the run of play and signalled Royston’s tactics for the rest of the half using the wind to kick the ball deep into our half.

Stortford re-grouped quickly after this set back and took the play to Royston using our forwards to set a platform with several phases before sending the ball wide through our backs.

Stortford really started to assert themselves in the final ten minutes of the half and were rewarded with a well worked try from Diddy Byatt.

The second half started in similar fashion with our forwards making several breaks leading to successive penalties in the Royston 22. Stortford came close to the Royston line twice on the left corner before spreading the ball to the right and Ryan Griffiths crashing over for a try from a quickly tapped penalty.

At this stage it really felt as though Stortford were in the ascendancy but a poor line out in the Royston 22 saw one of their backs steal the ball and run the length of the pitch to score. This was followed by several good breaks from their number 10 who Stortford failed to contain and he ran through to either score or set up another 3 or 4 tries.

Stortford heads started to drop and the referee who had been lenient about coming through the gate at the ruck and also had a loose interpretation of offside throughout the game started to get into some players heads.

Stortford shuffled the back row around a little which dramatically improved our tackling especially from Derry Joyce but another missed offside decision by the referee led to Ryan Griffiths venting his frustration and he was immediately shown a yellow card. No sooner had Ryan left the pitch than Royston targeted the gap he’d left in our defensive line and ran in another try.

This was one of those frustrating games that was much closer than the result would suggest and, had we contained the Royston fly half better in the second half it would have been a much closer result.

A special mention needs to be made of our 4th team debutants today who all gave strong performances even if they were playing out of position!
Well done to Joe O’Sullivan, Dan Sullivan, Joe Tracy (second appearance), Derry Joyce and Elan Hunt.

A really great effort from all of you and I look forward to training with you and playing with you over the months ahead.

Dick of the day today was Ryan Griffiths for his outburst at the referee which led to his second yellow card of the season.

Man of the match was Diddy Byatt for making some very big tackles, battling hard at the breakdown and making several breaks one of which led to his try.

There is no game next week although volunteers are required to assist with the Bonfire Night at the club. Please make an effort to assist with setting up during the day, marshalling during the evening or make a day of it and do both with a short break to watch England vs New Zealand mid-afternoon.

The following week (15th November) we have Enfield Ignations at home .
Rob