Barnes 24 Bishop's Stortford 1st XV 24

From the word go Barnes had difficulty in coping with Stortford's powerful, direct driving rugby and it was no surprise that the first score came through a try from a driving maul, following a 5 metre lineout, with hooker, Tom Crozier touching down after 7 minutes. What was less expected was the tremendous conversion by Pier Dotta from out wide, across a difficult wind. The visitors were quickly on the attack again and Barnes were looking increasingly vulnerable, until the first of a number of crucial Stortford errors showed them a chink of light, when a penalty kick for touch from inside the Barnes half found touch in goal, producing a massive turnover. Clearly not wishing to look a gift horse in the mouth, Barnes surged onto the attack and some clever interplay among their backs saw their right wing touch down and an ugly, but very effective conversion into the wind leveled the scores. Stortford continued to batter away at a resolute Barnes defence, but showed little sign of breaking through until the 26th minute, when Barnes lost the ball close to the halfway line, giving Sam Winter room to break forward and kick ahead for Nick Hankin to win the chase to the line an touch down again out wide on the right. Dotta repeated his first great conversion to take his side out to a 7-14 lead. Barnes again started to show signs of wilting under the continued battering from Stortford's ball carriers and Stortford this time took full advantage of a further penalty on 31 minutes, spurning a possible 3 points to go for touch and riving over from the resultant lineout for a second try to Tom Crozier. The conversion attempt, this time flew wide and, despite Barnes having lost a man to the sin bin, they managed to hold their line intact for the rest of the half, with some tremendous tackling, denying in the process an attempt by Stortford to repeat the earlier try, when, once again, they chose not to take three points from in front of the posts and kicked for touch.

Stortford started the second period on the front foot, but a soft offside from an attacking grubber kick was again punished severely by Barnes, who swept downfield, with some more impressive interpassing and support play for an unconverted try after only 3 minutes - albeit considerably helped by a blatant defensive error, when a Stortford player stepped up out of the line, without cutting off the play. Stortford appeared though to have regained the upper hand after a further 10 minutes, when the bonus point try came from yet another impressively driven maul, touched down this time by Richard Gill. The conversion was again wide, leaving the margin at 12 points. Whether through less effective execution, better defence, or a combination of both, Stortford's narrow, driving game now became less effective and Barnes came progressively more into the game, taking full advantage to score two tries after 30 and 35 minutes. The first again raised questions about the visitors' defence, which drifted unnecessarily, given that numbers were even, allowing the winger an easy passage to the line in the corner. This conversion went wide, but the second, from Barnes' own driven lineout maul was straight and true to level the scores at 24-24. Stortford showed great fighting spirit to drive their way back into the Barnes half, where another couple of penalties took them close to the try line. Another penalty was forced, as Stortford drove again at the home line, but time was virtually up, so that a lineout wasn't an option. Nevertheless, given that Barnes' biggest forward was yellow-carded for the offence, a scrum looked like a great option - particularly with the penalty try climax of last week's game fresh in the minds. Instead, though Stortford opted for the very difficult kick at goal and it was little surprise to many observers, when the goal attempt. into a gusty crosswind flew wide to leave the match drawn.

Congratulations to the Blues, on their 10th win in a row - particularly since it was achieved via a convincing win over OAs' 2s!