Chinnor 20 Bishop's Stortford 1st XV 36

After last week’s disappointing result at Dorking, Stortford had obviously put in some hard work on the training ground during the week and came out against Chinnor with all guns blazing. The lineout functioned extremely well and the scrum was solid too, providing a stream of possession in the first half, which was used to full effect, with the four try bonus point secured before the break through some purposeful team rugby.

It was the home side, though that took the early lead, their flyhalf, Bertie Hopkin kicking apenalty goal after only 2 minutes, when Stortford were penalised at a scrum. The rest of the half, pretty much belonged to the visitors, with two quick tries, both from driving mauls off well-worked lineouts. The first after 6 minutes went to Steve Ball and the second, 4 minutes later was registered by fellow flanker, Richard Gill. Mike Gallagher converted the first, but his econd effort went narrowly wide to leave his team 3-12 ahead. NickHankin was next to score, chasing an excellent kick ahead by Jimmy Rea, when the winger was closed down to dive over a floundering Chinnor defender to touch down for another unconverted try. At this stage, Chinnor started a serious fightback and it took some gritty defence from Stortford to keep their line intact. The strength of this defence was reflected in Chinnor opting to go for three points from right in front of the visitors’ posts but, amazingly the kick flew well wide. Further spurred on by this, Stortford flew back onto the attack and were awarded a penalty try after 33 minutes, when a third try from a driven lineout ball was denied by a collapsed scrum. This cost the home hooker 10 minutes in the sin bin and his side 7 points to make the score at the break 3-24.

Chinnor came out for the second half feeling they clearly had something to prove and tore into Stortford from the whistle. Having weathered the early storm, though it was the visitors who scored again after 4 minutes. The scorer was Johnny Neville, crashing over close to the posts off a flat pass, following a tremendous drive by Mark McCraith off the back of a 5 metre scrum. For the next half hour, it was the home side that dominated proceedings going through phase after phase of driving play, allowing Stortford very little of the ball and pressurising them into uncharacteristic mistakes on the few occasions they did. Stortford again showed great determination in defence, but their line was breached for the first time after 9 minutes with a final thrust from close quarters. The conversion went wide, as it did again after 19 minutes, when it was the home side’s turn to score from a driving maul after a lineout, taking the score to 13.31 With momentum now very much against them, Stortford had again to dig deep and they managed to prevent a now much stronger home side scoring again for almost 20 minutes. Having taken some of the steam out of the Chinnor effort it was,in fact Stortford that scored again after 37 minutes. This time it was Baxter Wilson – on off the bench for Richard Gill - to maintain the backrow’s scoring record with a tremendous try, bursting through the first line of defence from a great miss pass on the 22 from Arran Mahoney (himself on at scrumhalf for Tom Banks) and then standing up the fullback to plunge over for un unconverted try. Chinnor, though fought to the end and their own replacement scrumhalf, Greg Goodfellow rounded off the scoring at the death with a typical diagonal dart from the base of a 5 metre scrum. Hopkin kicked the difficult conversion to take the final score to 20-36.

This was a tremendous all-round performance from Stortford, with the team as a whole appearing to refind fully for the first time this season the spark, with which the last campaign ended. Keep it up boys!

p.s. Another excellent win for the Blues - also at Chinnor. Varying scores were reported, but believed to be in the region of 48-12, with some great running rugby on display.