Last Saturday, on a very windy afternoon, Brentwood, sitting top of London Division 1, made their first ever trip to Amersham & Chiltern, a club placed just behind Brentwood in the league table.

The visitors lost the toss, and started the first half with the sloping pitch in their favour, but playing into a strong wind, and were soon into their stride, when after the ball was moved quickly between forwards and backs, centre Adam Thomas raced clear of the covering defence and crashed over the try line to score, unfortunately the conversion was missed by Tom Simpson.

This was a hard fought game between two sides, who are both having a decent season, and are aware that promotion is possible. Brentwood had more than their fair share of possession in the first half, but found playing into the wind difficult, although they were helped by Amersham having a player sin binned, which Brentwood could not capitalize on. Amersham even managed to reduce the arrears when down to 14 men when their full back kicked a penalty following a Brentwood player being caught offside. Shortly after this the Brentwood try scorer Adam Thomas was also sin binned following some over enthusiastic tackling, and with both sides playing with 14 men Amersham took the lead with another successful penalty kick.

Brentwood then began to dominate, and after a good drive by the forwards veteran Tom King, dived over the line to put Brentwood ahead 10 – 6, unfortunately kicking into the wind the conversion was missed.
Frustratingly, straight from the kick off, a silly defensive error let Amersham back into the game, when the home side scored another penalty reducing the arrears to 1 point.
For the remainder of the half Brentwood were under pressure and Amersham scored a further penalty and a converted try, taking the half time score to 19 – 10, in the home sides favour. A position that all in the Brentwood contingent were happy with, bearing in mind that the wind would be in their favour in the second half.

The second half was not Brentwoods best performance of the season, although Tom Simpson did score an early penalty to reduce the difference, too many tackles were missed, and slowly but surely Amersham began to take control of proceedings. Brentwood’s James Metcalfe was harshly sin binned and both Billy Aldous and Jon Crisp left the field with injuries, and with Amersham gaining in confidence, and looking the fitter side, it was no surprise that they ran in two further converted tries taking the final score to 33- 13

All in all not a good afternoons work by Brentwood, they drop to second in the table, 3 points behind Amersham, but with eight home games left this season, which include visits from nearly all the teams in the top half of the table, they are still in a good position to challenge for the championship.

Chigwell Construction man of the match Henry Galligan, and a special mention to young James Vogel who came off the bench to play in the back row, and had another very promising taste of 1st VX rugby.