Bishop's Stortford 1st XV 43 Canterbury 0

The first half was attritional, with Canterbury aggressive in defence and limiting Stortford, despite their enjoying the lion's share of possession and territory, to only two scores. The first came after 16 minutes, when the visitors had coughed up possession in midfield and, as Stortford pressed into the opposition half, an offside penalty was conceded and Tom Banks kicked the goal for a 3 point lead. There was little to choose between the sides for the next 20 minutes, but successive penalties against Canterbury took Stortford well into the opposition 22 and, although repeated drives from the home pack were repelled, when the ball was released to the right, two quick passes created room for James Ayrton to burst between two defenders for a try, which was well converted by Tom Banks.

The game changed completely in the second half, with Stortford speeding up their game and Canterbury unable to sustain their smothering defence of the first half.

Apologies, but the rest of my report has somehow disappeared, apparently irretrievably into the ether and without my notes, cannot recreate it in full. Instead I have copied and pasted below the relevant part of the brief report I did for the Rugby Paper after the match.

The second half couldn’t have been more different, with the home side speeding up their game, as the visitors progressively tired. Stortford quickly crossed the line again, Will Roberts crashing through a couple of tackles for an unconverted try on 4 minutes, after good ground had been made by Baxter Wilson and Sam Winter. Six minutes later, Josh Stannard ran in from 30 yards out, as two defenders bought an outrageous dummy. Banks converted, as he did 8 minutes later, when Tom Lewis touched down, providing close support to James Apperley’s great break from a Canterbury handling error on halfway, that took him almost to the line. It was the second row who again finished off the best move of the game, picking up an offload from Winter, stopped just short, after James Ayrton had caught the defence on the hop, running from open to blind after 65 minutes. Austin Pope in his first start for the 1st XV converted, as he did 8 minutes later, when Sam Cappaert scored the sixth try from a clever switch pass from Nick Hankin to round off a convincing, but hard-earned victory.