Romford & Gidea Park vs. Rochford U11s, 15th November 2009

With all too frequent regularity this season, Rochford made the game hard work for themselves by not picking up ball and not rucking over. In this area Romford were clearly better than us. Luckily we had the ever exuberant Stefan, competing and trying to rip the ball out of Romford hands. Finally in a maul, Jake came out with the ball catching Romford off guard and opening up the score for Rochford. The boys knew they had a game on their hands and were getting the ball out to Michael and Harry on the wings who were both nearly over in the first half. However, a good passage of play saw Romford level the score at the close of the first half. The Romford boys certainly liked to get stuck in with some very near the mark tackling. A couple of our lads had to come off due to a few cheap shots, which were missed by the referee. Shirt pulling off the ball to prevent Rochford chasing was also an issue. With Rochford now on the back foot, Romford managed to nick the next score after sustained pressure saw them over. Crucially they didn’t convert their try meaning they were only five points ahead.

Romford were quite keen to kick the ball, which worked to our advantage as we had Matt Fitz-Patrick, who showed a safe pair of hands under the high ball and Michael who is difficult to match for speed in the chase. This proved to be the case where Michael ran the length of the field after one such down field kick, scoring our next try to level things up. Tom Child, ever sure with the boot, managed to convert the try putting us ahead. Callum had a good game today, robust in defence, closing down the gaps and also performing well in the scrum, which was depleted due to a couple of our regular boys from the scrum not being available this week.

Romford’s kicking game caused them to come unstuck again as Matt Fitz-Patrick caught the ball and sent it out to Harry on the wing. He was almost over but just brought down short of the line. Good support play from Michael meant he was there to pick the ball up and get his second score. Romford scored the last try of the match but the crucial conversion miss earlier in the game, gave Rochford the win.