The wet and windy conditions were not remotely suited to the kind of open, running rugby that both sides favour and, despite their best efforts to play an expansive game, it inevitably turned into a war of attrition. Playing into the wind in the first half, Stortford made early inroads by running the ball wide, but reverted to a more basic game for most of the 40 minutes, looking to drive up the middle and kicking, whenever stopped by a very strong DMP defence. This resulted in a bit of a stalemate for a period, but this was broken after 12 minutes, when Stortford mounted a powerful drive at the opposition line from a 5 metre lineout, with Will Rogers driven over for a try. This was the reward for a brave decision to have gone for touch from a penalty under the DMP posts and Dan Powell stepped up to add the huge bonus of a tremendous conversion from wide out. The visitors swept straight back onto the attack and soon won a very kickable penalty of their own for a breakdown offence. Showing less ambition than Stortford had shown shortly before, DMP opted for 3 points from the boot of Matt Minogue. Looking to build on this, the visitors exerted considerable pressure on the Stortford defence, but the home side's tackling proved up to the challenge. A bigger threat was yet to come, however, when an ill-judged attacking kick close to the DMP 22 was charged down and the resultant lose ball was hacked some 60 metres upfield. The visitors hurled themselves repeatedly at the Stortford line but, once again, the home defence stood firm and was able to see out the first half with their 7-3 lead.

The second half took a rather different shape, with Minogue putting in some telling short kicks in behind Stortford's defence to pose some attacking threat, while Stortford looked to kick for territory and than try to batter their way forward from there. Both defences stayed strong and, although the home side enjoyed an overall territorial advantage, DMP seemed to be playing with more control. Thus it was, with barely 10 minutes of the half gone, that the visitors forced a crucial error from the opposition, with one of a series of long passes being intercepted close to their own 22. Centre Ollie Walker caught the ill-judged pass and, wriggling out of a first-up tackle had just enough pace to make the try line from some 70 metres out. Minogue added the extras to put his side 3 points ahead and despite Stortford's sustained efforts to stretch and batter a hole through the opposition defence, for the vast majority of the remaining 30 minutes it looked as if the scoreline would remain unchanged. Indeed, with one or two threatening counter attacks, in which Chris McTurk figured prominently, the visitors might well have extended their lead, but for some tenacious last ditch defence from Stortford, aided by a couple of crucial DMP errors. As the game went on, though, Stortford's remorseless pressing increasingly put the visitors' strong tackling defence under stress and, moving the point of attack constantly were able to mount drive after drive at the try line. With only a couple of minutes left on the clock, it looked as if the opportunity to snatch the win might have been blown, as DMP managed to hold the ball up over their line, but, undaunted, Stortford quickly hurled themselves back into the red zone from the resultant goal line dropout. Once again, an attacker was held up over the line, but this time a penalty was awarded to Stortford for a prior breakdown offence, with only seconds left on the clock. The forwards opted for a tap and drive and, to the huge relief of the hardy home supporters, Rogers was driven over for his second try. The conversion attempt flew wide, but there was no time for the game to be restarted, so, for the second time in the season, Stortford had snatched victory from under the noses of a highly competitive DMP side.

Our thanks go to our old friends from Three Willows and Ace of Lanes who today, in addition to consuming their customary copious amounts of wine (!), were Man of the Match sponsors. The award rightly went to try-scorer Will Rogers, snatching the headlines from what was a vey dynamic display from the whole pack.