Blessed with a wonderful sunny day, everyone associated with both teams were looking forward to this last 8 encounter.
The match was preceeded by a minutes silence in memory of Maidenhead's coach, Tony Brooks who died suddenly last month. From kick off, Stortford held complete dominance for the first 15 minutes opening the scoring with a running try from winger Sam Tatchell and converted by Thomas Walker. Pushing within Maidenhead's 22 yard line, an intercepted pass saw Maidenhead's pacy number 8 run the pitch for a converted try. Undetered by this set back against the run of play, BSRFC pushed forward only for a try in the corner by Walker to be incorrectly disallowed for not grounding the ball.
The game continued and Stortford remained in the ascendancy with outstanding driving runs from Luke Bury and William Coxall before Maidenhead's full back broke down the left, evaded a couple of tackles and scoring a converted try. Further misfortune soon followed with a second intercept and converted try by centre Ben Harris on 30 minutes and a further try from the same player 5 minutes later to see half time at 7 - 26.
Recognising the first to score in the second half would be critical, Stortford duly took the initiative via a powering Tom Hitchcock run and score under the posts for a simple conversion. Maidenhead hit back with 3 tries leaving BSRFC with a mountain to climb in the final 20 minutes.
Piers Martin scored in the far right corner to raise hope only for Maidenhead to get a charge down and lucky bounce of the ball on the Stortford 22 to effectively seal the victory. Stortford came back with tries from Tim Simpson and William Tetlow to bring some balance back to the score as Stortford finished the stronger of the two sides.
Final score: BSRFC 31 - 52 Maidenhead
Scorers:
BSRFC - tries: Tatchell, Hitchcock, Martin, Simpson, Tetlow; conversions: Walker x3
Maidenhead - 7 tries, 6 conversions
We wish Maidenhead every success in the National Cup SF and look forward to the BSRFC U17A & U18A teams contest their respective County Cup Finals at OA's on 29th April