Rochford U15s vs. Upper Clapton, 13 February 2011
Upper Clapton had been promoted last season and already had a couple of League 1 wins under their belt and a place in the semi-finals of the Under 15 Essex Cup, having beaten Upminster, this looked like being a tough match.
Rochford started with the wind behind them so would need to make the best of the first half, so ran the ball back strongly from the kick off. Their initial attempt to score was stopped by strong tackles, but from a turnover scrum, the ball was passed to Sean Prior to score, Josh Lipscombe converting Rochford 7 – Upper Clapton 0. With only 7 minutes gone Kyle Bury increased the scoring from the wing Rochford 12 – Upper Clapton 0. Rochford kept attacking and on 11 minutes, for a held up attempt, Musa Youseff scored from the resulting 5 yrd scrum Rochford 19 – Upper Clapton 0.
The Rochford forwards were dominant in the scrums and line-outs and from a good kick over the top James Spicer ran through strongly to score Rochford 26 – Upper Clapton 0. Upper Clapton kept trying to get back in it but from another turnover scrum on the Rochford 22, Jedd Donnelly ran the ball forward strongly to score Rochford 33 – Upper Clapton 0. Still dominating the set pieces, Hayden made a good break from a line-out, before passing to James Arney to leave the half time score Rochford 38 – Upper Clapton 0.
From the restart Upper Clapton started the game with a new resolve, some good rucking and kicking, forced Rochford backwards and into making numerous handling errors, but were undone again, when Musa scored his second, from another turnover scrum Rochford 42 – Upper Clapton 0.
Rochford’s determination to keep winning the ball, saw them commit several penalties, which meant they conceded ground, but kept up the pressure allowing Mitchell Bennett to score Rochford 48 – Upper Clapton 0. With Rochford being urged to get another score, to go past the 50 point maximum for League games, the final ten minutes were quite even, before Josh Lipscombe scored following a good dummy pass. The game therefore ended Rochford 55 – Upper Clapton 0.
The Rochford forwards worked really well as a unit and their domination was rewarded with 4 of the 9 trys scored, this also saw the backs getting plenty of the ball.
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