Business End of Season Starts

The boys travelled to Ampthill on Sunday knowing that a challenging target of 3 wins from our final 3 games would see us crowned Champions. Unfortunately the first of these games saw us come up against a side also knowing that a victory would put themselves into the promotion picture alongside ourselves. Therefore almost a winner takes all game which was clearly evident in the changing rooms before the game.

The game opened with us showing some Barbarians style attacking adventure from under our own posts, hardly the best way to sooth the nerves of the coaching team! Despite a couple of excellent individual moments a combination of our own handling errors and Ampthill dominating the breakdown meant we couldn’t gain any decent pitch positions. The Ampthill fly half regular pinning us back in our own 25 with good tactical kicking. After losing Ben to illness before the game, a further blow came on 20 minutes when big Tom limped out having turned an ankle. The boys continued to tackle well until Ampthill won a scrum 15 metres out straight in front of the posts. Securing their own ball our backs failed to come up as a straight line allowing their fly half to dart through to open the scoring. So at half time we were somehow only 5-0 down despite not playing with anything like our normal potential.

In the second half we had the slight advantage of the elements and initially it looked like we would make use of them. Again though a combination of good strong tackling or our own poor decision making halted progress often within touching distance of the line. Having weathered a period of our domination Ampthill broke out. After conceding a penalty 10 metres from our own line the boys once again committed the cardinal sin of slowly ambling back, the Ampthill flanker scoring without a Camelot player laying a finger nail on him. A gifted 7 points.

With panic starting to set in and all structure being lost Ampthill quickly added a third try. 17-0 to our hosts. Some harsh words behind the posts from the coaches did at least get a response. Finally we tried something different to the one man charges, Jamie chipping over their quickly advancing defensive line and re-gathering his own kick. He made headway into the Ampthill 22, unfortunately though we couldn’t get any support to him quick enough and hence the home team snuffed out the chance. Finally we got on the score sheet and it was probably appropriate that it came about because of a mistake. Under pressure, their back line dropped the ball and Jamie picked it up, shrugged off the full back before sprinting 20 metres under the posts. He quickly added the extras, drop-kicking the conversion. We now trailed 17-7 with 5 minutes remaining.

However a second try failed to come despite us having 3 or 4 chances to score from phases of play in their red zone. Again white line fever meaning we easily got tackled short of the line or we ignored a 5 on 3 overlap. The defeat confirms Wasps as Division 3 Champions with 21 points, congratulations to them. We have to assume Ampthill will get a bonus point victory in their last game , which leaves us needing 2 bonus point victories from our last 2 games to take it to points difference.

We need to learn from this game and ensure the runners do not get isolated and the forward work harder to get to and beyond the ball at the ruck. We also need to learn to stop trying to turn tight games into aggressive battles, we are far more affective moving the ball about and running at space. Luckily we have the chance to get this disappointment out of our systems quickly with the County plate Semi-final being played under floodlights on Wednesday. Lets learn and finish the season on a high.