Cents in rare draw at home.

Old Cents entertained Newbury blues this weekend and both sides served up a quality match for their supporters.Newbury came with a load of supporters and they are currently third in the table enjoying a fine run of victories.One of those victories was over league leaders Maidenhead who Cents lost to heavily last weekend, so the visitors were the form team coming into the match.
However, Cents are a different team at home and despite a raft of injuries plus players not being available the home side still put out a strong side that would give their visitors a match.Both sides played their part in a very entertaining match played by two sides who wanted to play rugby in damp and cold conditions.
Cents started the stronger of the two sides and raced into a 12-0 lead inside the first 25 minutes when they scored tries through George Bvuma and Rich Pinkney and Harry Preece kicked one conversion. During this time Cents pack were on top in the tight and their line out was functioning perfectly.Cents had other chances to score but bad handling and decision taking let them down, however the Blues were also in the match with their attack minded approach to the match.The game was an end to end affair and it was no surprise that The Blues had pulled a converted try back by half time, score at half time 12-7 to Cents.
The score reflected the closeness of the two sides and more of the same was expected in the second half and so it turned out to be.Cents scored a further converted try in the first ten minutes of the second half through Ollie Locke and this was converted by Harry Preece.Cents led 19-7 at this stage and looked to push on for a victory but the Blues had other ideas and did not want to leave Cents with nothing form the match. In the space of a minute they levelled the scores with two well taken long range tries, one of which was converted.With about 10/15 minutes to go you would have thought the Blues would have won especially as the home side had to re-arrange their side when Joe Preece had to go off with a bad cut and Alex Cox suffered concussion(Both Backs)
However to their credit Cents regrouped and took the game to their visitors and they took the sting out of Newbury' momentum, playing most of the closing stages in the away sides '22'.Cents could not find the winning score and both sides had to settle for an entertaining draw.A draw was fair result for both sides and no one could fault the entertainment and commitment shown by both sides.
Next week Cents travel to Witney a place where it is always difficult to get a win,recently Newbury struggled to get a win there.However Cents should have a few more players to pick from.