Satisfying away win to start the campaign

Benfleet won the toss and chose to kick off. A chap from SWF (I think) caught the kick and Witham decided for once to start aggressively, driving at the opposition. Several drives later, we were in their 22 and they were struggling. Dave Sarling drove through their pack and when the tackler decided to lie on top of him, we had a penalty. Rodders felt the pack was up for it, so a neat kick to the corner gave us a lineout on the 5 metre line. Chris and Fingers combined on the throw and the resultant maul saw Darren Smith with the ball. The defence held the drive on the line, but when our chubby fly half (me) lent a bit of weight, Thomas the Tank Engine had his first try of the season. If he had driven right instead of left, I'm sure I'd have converted it. Benfleet had some big fellas and when any tackles were missed, they made good ground. Several surges saw them gain territory and when they sent it wide, they had an overlap and levelled the score. The restart saw us gaining ground again. This time, the defence infringed more centrally, so we took the 3 points and re-took the lead. Back in their territory again, we gained another penalty and once again kicked for the corner. This time the lineout was reduced to 5, with Josh Taplin slotting between the 10 and 12. When Lee Bywater sent the ball to 10, a tiny delay on the pass combined with a superb running line saw Tappy surge through their line to score. I converted that one. At this point in the game, Benfleet seemed to lose confidence and started kicking the ball away. Sadly for them, a chap called Shash (SWF again possibly) showed how much pace he had. Like the roadrunner with an ACME rocket on his back, he tore round defender after defender to score the first of his 3 consecutive and almost identical tries. (He got lazy and forgot to ground it under the posts so I missed the conversion). Our kicking game was more precise and when the ball landed between their backs and full back, our chasers were able to gather. Some slick passes between Steve Regan and Ian (Lee)Piper gave AJ (Jorge's boy) room to gallop down the wing before feeding it to Tappy for his second try. I like Tappy's tries- I convert them. Benfleet then had a resurgence and managed to score 2 tries in quick succession. The second was significant, as it came off several rucks in our 5 metre zone. At half time, the ref told me that he had played several advantages in that phase of play and used up what he called an acceptable tolerance in our red zone. Anyway, before half time, AJ showed not only great pace but incredible agility to bag himself a well deserved try. I got the conversion and we had a 44-17 half time lead.
Obviously the Benfleet half time talk was "Stop kicking to that f###ing full back and drive at them as they started the 2nd half with a pick and drive mentality that pushed us back into our own 22. Under our posts, the ref blew his whistle and penalised Witham for pulling a player into the ruck. He then promptly sin-binned Lee (it wasn't me) Bywater. Benfleet took the penalty so quickly they nearly ran into Lee as they drove for the line to score. While we were down to 14, they scored again and suddenly our lead didn't look so safe. But once Lee came back on, Witham steadied and slowed the game down a bit- until that speedy full back had another gallop at them. Towards the end, Dave "Rodders" Sarling got a yellow card - he's had a few but this was definitely the least deserved. However, AJ doesn't care if we're out numbered or he has a plaster on his cheek- he can still score great tries and did so. With the final play, as the rain lashed down, Benfleet scored with a rolling maul. They celebrated as if they'd won, but it was actually because the scorer had earned himself some oral favours from his young lady friend (I think that was meant to be secret).
The game was played in great spirit and looked so much fun that even Ade Dines trotted on for the last 5 minutes.