Match report courtesy of the

Saturday 3rd Febuary 2007

FROM ridiculous to sublime in just a week. This frustratingly brilliant Maids side produced a devastating display to destroy Basingstoke 50-8 on Saturday.

Last week Maids were truly awful. This week, they were everything they hadn't been against Oxford; clinical, committed, and brilliant to watch as they got their promotion push back on track with a wondeful win. Maids scored eight terrific tries, with their flying wingers grabbing the limelight as Simon Cripps scored five tries and Stuart Mackay crossed twice in a dazzling display of handling that was a joy to watch.

And by no means was this a victory over a lowly, struggling side, on the contrary, Basingstoke arrived at Braywick full of confidence on the back of their best performance of the season to beat Mounts Bay in their previous match.

But what Basingstoke didn¹t know was that they were lining up against an angry, hungry Maids side which was determined to take the criticism they had recieved following last week's loss, and ram it firmly back down the throats of their detractors.

They did that and then some. Everywhere you looked, Maids impressed. Richie Craig led stoutly and without fuss in the pack and the backs carried a cutting edge that their opponents were powerless to contain.

From start to finish this was a hugely impressive win, whatever the poverty of rugby coming the other way. Basingstoke were, with only a few moments of relief, played off the park. Coming in as the losers of three of their previous four games, Maids started as if injected by something illegal, shocking Basingstoke with the intensity of their running.

But the hosts won this game with two short but devastating periods of unstoppable rugby in either half. They crossed the line after just six minutes as Jonny Hammond, who was outstanding all day, made a jinking run that saw him break tackle after tackle and allowed Max Willcocks the space to find Simon Cripps with a miss pass and Cripps crashed over in the corner. Mackay added the conversion to make it 7-0. Four minutes later Maids were at it again, as Willcocks broke the Stoke line and found Stuart Mackay who cruised over and then added the conversion for 14-0.

It was Mackay who scored again three minutes later when a Willcocks break allowed Dan Martin and then Jonny Hammond to find space and Mackay did the rest to make it 21-0. Although Basingstoke added a penalty after 18 minutes and even scored a try after 35 minutes, it was temporary blip for Maids. Shortly before the break Cripps crunched his way over to finish off a move that had started with Mackay on the opposite wing to make it 26-8 at half-time.

The 18-point margin widened quickly after the break with further scores from Mark Ruddick and the unstoppable Cripps. All seemed well in the world for Maids as the working parts of their previously stuttering machine started to click again. Nearly everyone played their part. Gareth Edwards tormented Basingstoke with his verve from broken play and, right across the three-quarter line the backs demonstrated their customary incisiveness with Hammond's trademark straight running the perfect foil to Willcocks's long, sweetly flicked passes to the wings. Two more Cripps tries added a gloss but the backs had showed why, when they want to be, they are the best three-quarters in the division by a mile.

On Saturday, Maids set a marker and this level of performance must now become the rule for Maids, rather than the exception.