Bishop's Stortford 1st XV 18 CS Rugby 1863 17

Despite dominating the early exchanges and twice coming close to scoring tries, it was 18 minutes before the deadlock was broken when second row Hamish Irving forced his way over the line off the back of a driving maul. The position had been created from a 5 metre lineout resulting from one of a series of penalties conceded by the visitors. Tom Coleman's conversion stretched the lead to 7 points. Although the home side continued to have much the better of the game, the next score went to CSR, when flyhalf, Scott Hadden kicked a penalty after 30 minutes, when Stortford were twice penalised for breakdown offences after a brief foray by the visitors into opposition territory. Worse was soon to come, though when, after 37 minutes, Irving was yellow-carded for what seemed like a fairly harsh penalty for failing to release a tackled player, who seemed scarcely to have hit the ground at the time. CSR were not slow to take advantage, however, and a great line run by their right wing, James Houston cut through the heart of Stortford’s defence and saw him touch down for a try close to the posts. Hadden’s conversion took his side into a 3 points’ lead. Stortford, though surged back onto the attack and it was, perhaps, no surprise when a penalty at a breakdown close to CSR’s line brought a yellow card for the culprit, No 7, Joe Clarke. Immediate advantage of the situation was taken by the home side, as the pack drove flanker, Maehe Austin over for a try from the 5 metre lineout arising from the resultant penalty. Coleman’s conversion was deemed to have gone narrowly wide, leaving the score at halftime at 12-10.

Stortford started the second half in the ascendant, but wasted an opportunity to widen their lead, when a quickly taken penalty well into the CSR half was ended with a poor pass into touch. The next score, nevertheless went to the home side, as Coleman kicked a penalty after 10 minutes for another breakdown offence. The gap was further widened to 8 points some 15 minutes later with another Coleman penalty, as the visitors were penalised for not releasing the ball, as a good team chase of an excellent long kick out of defence by centre, John Stocker put them under pressure. The visitors, heartened by some poor Stortford tackling now started to get the upper hand and, but for their inability to deal with Stortford’s aggressive contesting of the throw-in at lineouts might well have met with more success. As it was, they had to content themselves with a single try scored off a tremendous break made by the fast feet of fullback, Brendan Ward, stepping in at first receiver and totally wrongfooting a number of Stortford defenders before setting a teammate free to run in close to the posts untouched. Hadden’s conversion took the score to 18-17 and, with 10 minutes still to go it took some stern tackling and iron discipline on the home side’s part to hold at bay a now pretty rampant CSR side. The final whistle was, therefore greeted with huge relief by Stortford’s players and supporters.