With this Old Albanians squad, unbeaten in two seasons up in Division 1 and current Champions, today was always going to be the toughest challenge of the season, with our BSRFC boy’s only gaining promotion from Division 2 last term. That said, with last weekend’s inspiring 1st XV victory over Old A's, a much strengthened / deepened U14's squad from last season and 5 back to back, bonus point, League WINs, (including one over Hertford), we started at Silver Leys with our tails up and a drop-kick into the wind !

Having averaged >35 points per match todate, scoring has not been a problem but we have been tending to concede about 15 points on average and in only the first 4 - 5 minutes, a couple of Old Albanians phases of play sucked in too many of our players and a cross field kick, left us exposed and a favourable bounce, saw us concede the first try, (un-converted).

Our boys rallied well and a very combative 10 minutes ensued with good forward play from the likes of Albert, Elvin and Belton giving our backs a platform for a number of excursions within the oppositions half. After a couple of phases distributing it wide, Mitchell stepped inside and drew in a couple of defenders, leaving room for Oakey to run onto the offload and make nearly 40 yards before being dragged down himself and offloading to Longaretti in support, for the first of his three tries. Old A's bounced back quickly, exerting pressure from the dominant scrum and a couple of weak tackles saw them scoring again out wide. For the rest of the half, although we were slower to the breakdowns, our forwards like Mehmet, Walker and Head were managing to retain the ball and eventually after a couple of better phases, space opened-up for our own cross field kick from Mitchell, (following a penalty advantage), which beat the defence but also bounced over young Stevenson, out wide on the wing / 5-yard line. The sustained pressure was evident though and two BSRFC tries followed in quick succession from Parry and Longaretti, with trademark strong individual runs, following good build-up play from our backs whose rush defence was creating turn-over ball from a few uncharacteristic Old A's knock-ons: So 19 - 10 at half time to the Blues.

Some rotation of players at half time but the exciting end-end play continued for the first 10 minutes when eventually Old A's found space out wide and our cover defence was beaten. With only 4 points now in it, the game became a little edgy, we maybe didn't take full advantage of the wind and most of the play was kept in the middle of the pitch with mistakes from both sides keeping the ref, (Keith Edgeworth), busy. With Williams frequently having to dig the ball out of a retreating scrum, it was a No.8 pick-up that eventually broke the deadlock and some good inter-play between backs / forwards eventually seeing us cross the line for one last time, (Barnett - Please note you don't play the cross-bar challenge, if taking a conversion kick, during the last 5 minutes of a league match !).

A superb performance by the x19 young U14 BSRFC players, also 5 or 6 other boys either injured, (Millard / Winfield), or playing over at Hitchin today, have all contributed fully to us finishing on the top of the league, during our first season in Division 1.

That’s our HML over for this season, a couple of weeks off and its then AWAY to Letchworth again, in the HERTS Cup Quarter Final on 28th Feb’16.