Cents beat one of the league pace setters

Old Cents put up one of their best defensive displays of the season to send the high flying Thornbury team home with only their third defeat of the season.
Thornbury must have been full of confidence coming into this match after giving Cents a beating at their place and having beaten most sides this season to lie second in the table before todays match.They brought a large number of supporters to this match expecting a win but they left with only a bonus point from this match.
Games between Cents and Thornbury have always been close affairs at the Stade De Bridge and this was no exception with Cents putting in a magnificent defensive display to maintain their good home record against their high flying visitors.
The first half was dominated by both defences although both sides tried to move the ball from anywhere on the field.The only real scoring opportunity came near the end of the first half when Thornbury missed a straight forward penalty chance when their kicker slipped as he was taking the kick at goal.
Although the score at half time was 0-0 this was not a dull game as the match was played at a fast pace by both sides.Old Cents forwards were in fine form as they held the bigger Thornbury pack with ease in all areas of the match.Their backs never gave the bigger Thornbury backs any space to move in and they never really did change their tactics once they had been thwarted by the Old Cents defence.
The second half followed the same pattern as the first half with both sides trying to move the ball at pace but both defences stayed on top.It was going to take a mistake or a good piece of play to unlock either sides defences to win the match and it was Old Cents who created the only piece of good back play to open up Thornbury's strong defence.They created a well worked try with about 20 mins remaining in the match when the ball was moved at pace from the half way line and went through several interpassing movements to leave Joe Preece sprinting for the line wide out.Liam narrowly missed the conversion.
Thornbury upped their game in the final quarter and even with Cents playing with 14 men in this period due to a yellow card being shown to Rob Tucker, the away side could not breach the impressive home sides defence.
Thornbury had Cents penned in their half for most of the final quarter but they could not make any headway because their attacks were easily read by Old Cents and they lacked a plan B when their large backs could not make any head way against the smaller tough tackling Cents three's.
For Old Cents this was a well earned win and maintains their recent run of good form.there was no particular man of the match because all the squad played their part in the win.