Bedians soar over Eagle

By Ali Webley

Old Bedians came into this game off the back of 2 victories and with a strong looking back line confidence was high.

This showed straight from kick off with Bedians driving the ball up the pitch through strong runs from the forwards especially Richard Thompson. The ball was shipped out to the strong back line with Dafydd Roberts-Harry playing his first game at fly-half and orchestrating things fantastically, Bedians moved up the pitch with apparent ease and a few phases later touched down on the corner. A difficult conversion was missed but the supporters on the sideline were imagining an easy day for Bedes and a big score.

However, Eagle appeared to have been awoken by this display and suddenly brought a ferocity to their play that had been absent for the 1st 10 minutes and using a simple plan of one out rugby with their scrum half dictating the play as ever they rumbled down the pitch to score through the forwards. They also missed the conversion to make it 5-5.

It looked as if it was going to be a story of the Eagle forwards vs the Bedians backs. However the Bedians forwards, far from being dominated, started to put pressure on the Eagle pack. Pat Willis orchestrated the line-outs superbly and Eagle barely won a single one all game. The front row of Ed Daniells, Tim Hughes and Tom Ash put pressure on the Eagle scrum and superb defence all round but especially from Jack O’Shea and even Pat Willis along with the expected strong running of the backs gave Bedians a line out in the corner. Pat Willis unsurprisingly put in a line-out call that ended up with a driving maul and himself going over the line to score in the corner.

However Eagle once again came back with the same pattern and score in a very similar fashion, this time converting a forwards try to put it the score at 10-12.

The men in blue then also repeated their last try and scored with a driving maul off a line out. The conversion was again missed but Bedes could sense they were in the ascendency.

Eagle could sense this too, the backs were starting to live up to their pre-game potential and the Eagle team responded with several high tackles. Rob Blewitt’s pretty face seemed to bear the brunt of these tackles.

However, the backs weren’t discouraged and they suddenly clicked into gear, the ball going through the hands with the combination of Sam Williams passing to Lawrence Smith who offloaded to Arthur Menard to touch down in the corner at unbelievable pace. The supporters on the sideline were gushing with admiration.

Bedes were now 8 points up and following several high tackles one of the Eagle forwards was given a second yellow card for numerous high tackles and from the ensuing penalty Rob Blewitt ensured Bedes increased that to 11.

However credit is due to Eagle, who, despite this onslaught and being down to 14 didn’t give up and they once again drove down the pitch to score cutting the deficit to 4 points and giving the supporters something to worry about.

Old Bedians didn’t lose their heads and came straight back at Eagle and a lovely move down the left with a sublime flick pass from Sam Williams gave us momentum down the pitch and the fantastic interchanges between forwards and backs led to Joe Powell putting the game beyond the reach of Eagle with a try the corner which was converted by Blewitt to make the final score 30-19.