Bishop's Stortford First XV 10 Blackheath 10

With a gale and intermittent rain blowing down the pitch, Stortford played the first half with the elements at their backs. The visitors. though, dominated the scrums, making it hard for the hosts to create a good platform and, when opportunities were created to kick for position, they seldom worked out. Stortford, therefore had little option but to keep the ball in hand and they managed to do this to considerable effect, given the horrendous conditions. Occasional errors were inevitable but, having managed, against the odds to create 4 good scoring chances, Stortford did manage to finish off two with unconverted tries. The first came after 11 minutes, when Nick Hankin, running at pace, made an incredible one-handed pick up of a Blackheath grubber kick inside his own half and then made some 30 yards through the heart of the visitors' defence to find James Thacker in support, who in turn fed Sam Winter, who was able to use an extra man out wide to dummy his way over for a try in the corner. Blackheath used their scrum superiority and frequent resulting penalties to hold the opposition in check and were rewarded with a breakdown penalty with 19 minutes gone in front of Stortford's posts, but some 40 metres plus out. A bit of backchat from a Stortford forward was punished with a further 10 metres, giving Mark Cooke a relatively easy 3 points from the tee. Barely a minute had passed, though before Stortford extended their lead to 7 points with a second unconverted try. This was much more of an opportunist score, with George Keen charging down a poor kick close to halfway, hacking it on and winning the race to the touchdown out wide. Once again, the conversion attempt across the howling gale flew wide and halftime came without further score.

A seven point lead looked hard to defend against the wind and increasing rain in the second half, but Stortford set about the challenge with gusto. A handling error and a soft breakdown penalty soon gave the visitors a chance to narrow the gap, but the shot at goal was pushed wide. The hosts proceeded to deprive the opposition of the ball for extended periods, with some impressive handling and committed hard running, but threatened only briefly with a turnover and kick ahead, which ended in touch. Blackheath's scrum dominance continued, with further penalties awarded against the Stortford front row and, after 63 minutes Tom McCrone paid the price with a yellow card after a scrum under Stortford's posts. Two further scums produced the almost inevitable penalty try, shortly after which Miles Huppatz was also carded, causing scrums to go unopposed for 7 minutes. The visitors were unable to exploit the numerical advantage but, shortly after Stortford were restored to 15 men, Blackheath looked as if they might have scored form a clever dink kick across the line. After consultation between ref and touch judge, though a 22 dropout was the decision. Stortford again had to dig deep against the powerful visiting forwards and, although heavily outweighed, the home pack kept going amazingly, both with and without the ball, as indeed did the backs, to see out the game for an important and well-deserved draw.

Our thanks go to Matchday Sponsors, HAM (Harlow Agricultural Merchants) for their continued support and to BIT Solutions, whose Man of the Match award went to Nick Hankin. The fullback proved hard to tackle, whenever he got the ball, although the prize might arguably have gone to any one of a number of forwards, that had fought so hard against the odds all afternoon, with Charlie Kingham perhaps the pick of a very good bunch.