This game finally went ahead at the third attempt. Heath travelled to Cobham on the back of a strong win last weekend. The sky was bright and the conditions were perfect for rugby. Looking at the table both sides were beside each other with Heath 2 points ahead. Heath had won convincingly earlier in the season but knew that Cobham had been playing well recently and a repeat of that result was unlikely. It was going to be a close game.
The game got off to an energetic start, but it was Cobham who drew first blood. They converted a penalty after three minutes which was kicked by a man familiar to the Heath team, former club captain Owen Ashton. A mistake on the Heath 22 after 6 minutes let Cobham in for the first try, scored with a break down the right wing. This was converted to leave Cobham 10 points up after just seven minutes.
Heath continued to work hard and after some good pressure won a penalty in front of the posts. What would normally have been a routine kick was inched past the post by the wind. There was a sense this might not be Heath’s day. Straight away Heath sought to prove that they could be masters of their own fate. Cobham restarted from the missed penalty and Heath powered back at them with Sam Hill impressively crashing over the line less than sixty seconds later. At 10-5 Heath were now back in the game.
Heath started to build some pressure and this resulted in the Cobham 14 being sent to the sin bin on 17 minutes. The team exerted strong pressure on Cobham hoping to capitalise on their numerical advantage. Unfortunately though it was Cobham who raised their game. A rolling maul was pushed over on 22 minutes and then on 28 minutes Heath lost possession while attacking and let Cobham in for a converted try in the corner. Ben Davis scored a try for Heath before half time which Rob Jackson dutifully converted. The half time score was 22-12 with the game very much either side’s to win.
The second half told a similar story. Within the first minute of the restart Cobham scored another try and converted to stretch their lead to 29-12. Heath continued to put Cobham under pressure and just 4 minutes later Sam Galbraith scored to narrow the gap by 5 points.
Heath looked good and were playing well. They had the measure of Cobham in both the lineout and the scrum. In fact if you looked at the game at any point it would have been hard to judge which side was actually leading. Despite some strong pressure Heath couldn’t find another score and it was in fact Cobham who scored two more converted tries to leave the final score at 43-17.
It was actually a pretty solid performance from Heath. On the day though everything just seemed to go right for Cobham. It could very easily have finished with the scores reversed.
Team : Galbraith, Atkins, Hoare, Quay, Cashman, Jackson, Maynard, Pothecary, Jenkins, Printemps, Hill, Hollingum, Shelley, Salisbury, Davis
Replacements : Hopcroft, Baugh, Fry