U14s' fifth straight win in Berkshire league at Bracknell

Bracknell U14s 0 v Maidenhead U14s 67
Sunday 3rd March 2002

Conditions were ideal for Rugby as the game started with clear blue sky and excellent conditions under foot. It took Maidenhead nearly 10 minutes to exert their numerical superiority as a number of minor infringements put them on the back foot. The Bracknell fly half was able to make a number of good clearing kicks in this period, but a failure to find touch led to the first try for Maids by Alex Cannon. This settled Maidenhead and they scored a further 5 tries in the first half – including 2 from Mitch Batten who played with his usual ferocity throughout. Other tries came from Tim Johnson and a second from Cannon who latched on to a perfect kick ahead from Alasdair Bruce to score under the posts. Tom Morgan scored the pick of the first half tries. It involved 5 forwards, and was straight from a kick off. Tom Plummer took it on, Johnson made good ground before passing to Pat McSweeney who handed on to Ashley Hanks and finally Morgan sprinted through to dive close to the posts with a flourish. Bruce converted two of the tries to give half time score of 34 nil.

In the warm up before the match started, the Maidenhead coaches had asked for a big improvement in the effectiveness of the teams rucking. There were some signs during the game that the forwards had been listening and in this aspect, Andrew Jones and Skipper Luke Knowles were the pick of the bunch.

The second half continued in the same vein with Maids taking advantage of the extra man when ever possible. A number of substitutions were made with Dave Hodgson and Ryan Christian (2) both scoring tries in unaccustomed positions. Tom Hocking scored between the posts as he took a great pass out of the tackle from Bruce. Chris Parrott scored the best try of the half as inter-passing between Christian and Hodgson left Parrott a 15-metre sprint to the line. Bruce kicked 4 conversions in the 2^nd half to make the final score 67-0.