2nd XV Lose to Stanford Le Hope II 43-33

There were good points and bad....

Old Brentwoods Travelled to Stanford Le Hope on a chilly Saturday afternoon, with the club house all shut up upon arrival at 12.45pm, kick off was subsequently disrupted and delayed to 2.15pm.

OBRFC II's had a very mixed squad with Colt Tim Mason making his senior Debut at 10 and welcoming newcomer Matt at outside centre. Losing the toss Stanford chose the end and OBRFC received the kick, pressure was quickly applied through a shallow kick off and the ball was stolen through lack of warm up and awareness. Stanford continued to push forward through their pack moving the team and eventually breaking through after a couple of missed tackles.

Missed tackles seemed to be a theme for the afternoon, play from the kick off continued OBRFC turning the ball over spreading it wide through the hands of Wally Smith to Matt who sprinted and broke the Stanford defensive line and went over the try line for a score. Wally stepped up and slotted the kick not far off the touch line. Score was 5-7.

Multiple defensive errors by the forwards had allowed the Stanford team to building there score up with a following 3 tries. The Team knew this wasn't how we had played this season and started to arrange some pods and structure to the game, however minor handling errors due to the cold causing the ball to be turned over. However we knew if we put the right phases together we could score against the opposition with another score coming from James Sullivan just before half time.

In the second half Stanford played the had running game they had in the first half, it seemed very one dimensional. Slowly and surely OBRFC seems to get some plays together culminating in great pressure and a further try from Matt. Stanford applied the pressure and score straight of the back of the score.

A few angry words from Captain Aaron Knapp were said to gee up the players, this seems to do the job as aggression picked up from Dan Savidge, Charlie Raymond Snr and Stuart Sullivan. All Three hitting hard running lines at Stanford, giving them a taste of their own game, moving play up the field James Sullivan was the recipient of a no arm should tackle into touch seeing Stanford go down to 14 players for the last 8 minutes.

OBRFC dominated the last 8 minutes of the game with aggressive play all over the field with Tim Mason crashing over for a try for the final play of the game. The aggression didn't come soon enough, and we know what we have to work on next week.

MOTM - Tim Mason (Scorer of 1 try on Debut and all round game play)
MOTM - Matt (Scorer of 2 tries on Debut and all round game play)
DOTD - Dan Savidge (Just being Dan Sav)