U17s hang on to their unbeaten league record

Maidenhead U17s 10 v Stow on the Wold U17s 7
Sunday 22nd January 2006

Maidenhead preserved their unbeaten league record when they survived intense pressure in the last quarter of a desperately close and tense thriller at Braywick on Sunday and hung on to win by 3 points. The records will show that the referee had to take out the yellow card for players on both sides. This might suggest that it was an ill tempered and violent confrontation, or that the referee lost control of affairs.

Neither assumption could be further from the truth. This was a match played in the very best traditions of rugby between two evenly matched teams; a real cliff hanger of a league fixture. With the result in doubt until the final whistle, the game was played at a frantic pace, with both teams displaying total commitment, but never allowing the obvious tension to spill over into violence or foul play. This was largely down to the referee, who kept both control of the game and the respect of the two sets of players.

A good indicator of the spirit in which the match was played was the immediate invitation after the game from the Stow manager for Maids to visit them for a return fixture after the league season.

With Maids forced to play for much of the match with two outsides in the pack and regular No 8, David Sewell, sidelined with injury, the forwards lacked their normal fluency. This was most noticeable in the line out, where it took Maidenhead some time to get the normally well oiled machine functioning properly. It was also the first time this season that the Maids backs came across opponents who were not fazed by their pace and who were able to close them down when they attacked. With things not going as well as usual, some of the Maids’ discipline and decision making went to pieces, particularly when they won a string of penalties inside the Stow 22.

Stow had to manage for much of the game with 14 men, but still played a good blend of tight and open play and had a back line which always looked potentially threatening.

The opening exchanges of the match were very even, with play moving from end to end. Maids opened the scoring after 17 minutes, when, from a line out near the Stow line, second row Shaun Jefferies was driven over for a good forwards’ try.

For a while it looked as if Maids might build on their 5 point lead, but a few seconds of carelessness let Stow back into the match. A badly taken 22 drop-out went to Stow’s powerful left winger, who ran it straight back past a bemused Maids’ defence for a try which he himself converted. 5-7 and all to play for!

In a frantic second half both teams had chances of scoring, indeed both thought they had, only to find the ball had not properly been grounded. However, although Maids spent much of the time in desperate, but successful defence, it was they who scored the winning try mid way through the half when second row Liam Lynch forced his way over to score. For the rest of the game the forwards had to switch from attack to defence, driving back repeated assaults on their line.

Maids will have been so relieved to hear the final whistle that they probably hadn’t noticed that for this first time this season they had to rely on the tight forwards to score all their points and that they failed to get the bonus point for scoring 4 tries.