Rosslyn Park 18 Bishop’s Stortford 1st XV 15
Stortford started aggressively and soon had Rosslyn Park on the back foot, swinging the ball around at high speed to great effect. Strong Park defence and crucial Stortford errors, however, combined to keep the scoreboard blank until the 11th minute, when the visitors stretched the opposition with a number of phases of quick ball, creating a two on one that allowed Jack Biard to throw a dummy and crash over in the corner for an unconverted try. Park got straight onto the front foot from the restart and took 3 points from a breakdown penalty under the posts and Stortford proceeded to get on the wrong side of the referee, conceding a number of penalties, as the home side exerted a period of pressure. This culminated in a tackle from Will Rogers in the red zone deemed to have been high and resulting in a yellow card for the skipper after 20 minutes. Stout defence from Stortford allowed them to see out the sin-bin period without conceding and, aided by a couple of Park handling errors, almost got to the break in the lead. This was despite having lost flyhalf, Dan Powell to a foot injury, necessitating a reshuffle of the whole backline. However, another penalty awarded against the visitors at a breakdown, as they drove out of defence brought a 5m lineout to the home side. Although the resultant maul was initially well-defended, winger, Benji Marfo, who had added his weight to the drive, broke off the back, as it crossed the line to score a try to give his side a 3 point lead at halftime.

Whether shaken by this late change of fortune, or simply cold out of the changing room, Stortford started the second period meekly, conceding a soft early penalty for a lazy, rather than dangerous high tackle on halfway, which took the opposition into their 22. This led to a torrid 25 minutes for the visitors, as a combination of loose kicking and a series of further penalties gave the opposition chance after chance to attack. Superb as the visitors’ defence was, if you give a running side like Rosslyn Park so many opportunities, they will eventually make one count and, in this case, the one turned into two, as they took full advantage of two 5 metre lineouts from penalties to add two more mauled tries after 59 and 63 minutes. These came, despite more ferocious Stortford defence, as Park threw wave after wave of hard-running attacks at them. At this stage, it looked as if the inevitably tiring Stortford defence might be overrun, but, in typical Stortford fashion, they fought back and, on 70 minutes registered their second try through Chris Bolton, after an initial break by Charlie Briers had been taken on powerfully almost to the line by Tom Mills. David Hayes’ conversion attempt from out wide fell just short. The momentum was now, suddenly, with Stortford and they put together another incisive handling move, with Pope and Biard making telling inroads to set Mills free to score Stortford’s 3rd try with 4 minutes left. The conversion attempt, which would have narrowed the deficit to 1 point, unfortunately went wide in the haste to get the game restarted. The pressure was now very much on the home side, but they managed to resist some frantic attacking play and their relief at holding on to the ball for the last minute to end the game by hoofing it into touch was palpable.

Overall, another fighting Stortford performance against a top side, bringing home another bonus point but the overriding feeling at the end was of another win that slipped through the hands.