Hull Ionians 32 Bishop's Stortford 1st XV 39

Stortford started the game aggressively and, although Ionians had more of the ball, the visitors kept the home team pressed inside their own half for the vast majority of the first quarter, scoring a penalty through Tom Walker after 4 minutes and a well-worked try after 7 minutes from George Keen following good work by Will Roberts and James Apperley and a well judged scoring pass from Sam Winter. Tom Walker added the extras. The visitors proceeded though to bring the opposition steadily into the game with some purposeless kicking and increasingly sloppy play and were made to pay after 23 minutes, when two successive penalties went to touch and Ionians' pack found it all too easy to drive over for a try from the second lineout on the 5 metre line. A good conversion by flyhalf, Max Titchener, narrowed the deficit to a single point, but worse was to come, when a dreadful lack of defensive discipline on Ionians' 22 allowed the home side to burst out of defence and one pass was enough to set their speedy right winger clear to outpace the cover defence for an unconverted try. Not content with this generosity, though, the visitors conceded a penalty close to halfway very soon after the restart and a good kick to touch created another chance for the home side to mobilise their driving maul from the lineout. Stortford managed just about to hold out the opposition pack through a number of phases, but, when Ionians decided to move the ball out, it took only two straightforward passes to allow their burly centre to crash over close to the posts, sending their side into the break with an 11 point lead.

Although undoubtedly geed up by some straight half-time talking, Stortford invited further pressure from the restart with a poor clearance kick and had to defend for their lives for several minutes. Unfortunately, when they finally seemed to have stemmed the flow, the referee failed to spot a home player clearly failing to make any attempt to roll away from Stortford's side of a ruck and instead awarded Ionians a scrum. This phase of the game had been edged by the home side throughout but, on this occasion, they shunted the Stortford pack backwards, allowing their No 8 to crash over for an easy try, well converted by Titchener to stretch the lead to 18 points. Stortford now recognizing that they had nothing to lose, launched into a series of attacking drives, which steadily sapped the remaining strength from the home team's defence. Two converted tries soon resulted, the first going to Winter on 55 minutes, after a clever chip kick from Brad Burr, on as replacement flyhalf and the second came from the power of replacement wing, Josh Stannard, who fended off a couple of would-be tacklers out wide to run in under the posts from 30 metres, with 60 minutes gone. The visitors' generosity had not been exhausted, though and Titchener's second attempt at goal from successive penalties was successful to stretch his side's lead to 7 points with 12 minutes left. The gap was closed 5 minutes later, when one of several telling runs from Winter saw him burst through the home defence to find Chris Smith in close support to touch down, Burr adding a straightforward conversion. Stortford went straight back onto the offensive from the restart and were rewarded with a penalty under the posts, which Burr again converted. The visitors were not ready to settle for trying to defend the resultant 3 point lead and, when Ionians failed to deal with a high kick, Stannard once again showed his strength, this time breaking from the base of a ruck and bursting into the home 22, where he found Winter in support to crash over for a try, again converted by Burr. There was just enough time for Stortford to botch a difficult restart take under pressure from the onrushing Ionians forwards and concede a penalty, which Titchener gratefully converted to give his team a deserved second bonus point.