Bishop's Stortford 1st XV 14 Richmond 38

The home side started brightly, but were frustrated by handling errors and were well and truly on the back foot after 7 minutes, when Chris Smith was yellow-carded for a deliberate knock-on on his own 22, even though there looked to be ample defensive cover. Richmond took full advantage, scoring two converted tries during the sin-bin period. The first came after 14 minutes through Patrick Case, after a well-placed chip kick from Lewis Dennett and the second was scored by Alex O’Meara, when Stortford were punished for losing an attacking lineout, allowing the opposition to burst quickly up field and clinically to stretch the scrambling cover defence for the fullback to slide through a gaping hole. Dennett kicked the conversions. Within 4 minutes, though, Stortford bounced back, with Austin Pope rounding off a short period of pressure by touching down from a Dan Cole chip kick, with the flyhalf converting. Despite a misfiring lineout, Stortford ended the half on the front foot but failed to capitalise on a scrum penalty inside the opposition 22, when the shot at goal went wide.

The hosts started the second half strongly and quickly scored a try, with Pope touching down for the second time to level the scores. Loose defence, however allowed Richmond to bounce back immediately with their own unconverted try ( O’Meara’s second ) and from then on it was pretty much one-way traffic, with any occasional glimmers of hope for the home supporters quickly snuffed out by further errors. The visitors ran hard and supported well but, most significantly of all, made few unforced mistakes and took their opportunities well. The victory was sealed with three further tries in the last 16 minutes of the game. First, a penalty for a tackle offence on Stortford’s 22 went to touch and Richmond’s pack had no difficulty in driving over from the resultant 5 metre lineout after 64 minutes. Further errors at Stortford lineouts allowed the visitors to keep up the pressure, leading directly to the next try conceded after 71 minutes, when, despite taking the ball cleanly from the throw in at a lineout only 5 metres from their own line, the pack allowed a Richmond forward, Barnaby Vaughan, to step through and take the ball from the hands of Stortford’s jumper and then simply flop over the line. The final try, typifying the way in which Stortford's luck is running at the moment, came from a very fortunate bounce of a speculative kick off the arms of a leaping defender straight to an onrushing Luc Jones, who ran in untouched. This took the final points margin out to 24, considerably exaggerating the difference between the two sides over the 80 minutes.