Bishop’s Stortford Colts 53 – Ealing Trailfinders 25

Chris Hadley, special correspondent, reports on Bishop’s Stortford Colts 53 – Ealing Trailfinders 25
 
Bishop’s Stortford Colts took another step towards national cup glory when they clashed with round two opponents Ealing Trailfinders, at Silver Leys on Sunday. The boys, a mixture of U16, U17 and U18 players, had run in 5 tries away from home against Saracen’s Amateurs in round one a few weeks ago, so confidence was high, and it showed from the whistle. With the sun on their backs, Stortford’s powerful and mobile forwards repeatedly broke the Ealing line, pushing the game quickly into the opposition half and the home side looked likely to score from the off. Handling errors saw two early opportunities go begging, but the rewards eventually came as the ball went wide to outside centre Alfie Perring, who stormed over for the first try of the afternoon, converted by Francis Moore. Seven minutes gone.

Ealing had no intention of sitting down and their big forwards came back hard, giving the blues plenty of problems at the set-piece and it was twenty minutes before Stortford increased their tally with a brilliant individual try from Francis Moore – the first of an eventual hat-trick from the fly-half.

Flying high, Stortford tried to play too much ball off own their line and let Ealing back into the game with two late first half corner-flag tries. Moore slotted a penalty and the half-time score was 15-10. Stortford were rattled and responded emphatically within minutes of the restart when Moore broke the line and went through a series of gears to score under the posts. 20-10. That was the momentum change. The forwards ran the phases, punching up into the Ealing half, before unleashing the pace-men. Hudson Rees-Jones scythed through off the blind-side wing, collecting an inside pass and beating several tackles (Try. Converted: Moore) and Perring was at full-pelt now, bagging two tries in close-succession, both converted.

The engine-room got their own prize through prop Adam Mehmet’s surging try before Moore rounded off his man-of-the-match performance with yet another converted touch down. 53-10.

Stortford’s use of rolling subs was instrumental in the victory, but with a few minutes on the clock, six last minute changes of personnel proved too disruptive to a side that had already done all the hard-work in D, and Ealing made a valiant eleventh-hour fight back, with strong running from their impressive No.5 close to the breakdown and missed tackles by the home-side allowing the visitors to add three tries to the scoreboard.

Final whistle: 52-25. They will now meet Hitchin in R3 on 10th February 2019