Match Report |
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| Date - 18th February 2001 | Old Brentwoods 1st XV -v- South Woodham Ferrers 1st XV |
| Old Brentwoods lost 18 - 8 | |
South Woodham deserved their victory, although the game was much closer than the scoreline suggests. Played on a very heavy pitch, the game was dominated by a titanic struggle up front between 2 very committed sets of forwards. South Woodham elected to play with the wind in the first half and kept the visitors penned in their own half. They had a fair share of the possession but couldn’t break through the Blues’ midfield defence of Laws and Holmes and Peace at full-back. After a while, they abandoned trying to run through the backs and instead kept it tight. They recycled possession again and again and were camped on the Old Boys’s line for extended periods of play. But for some impressive tackling by pack-leader Born, Womersley and Buchanan the score would have been somewhat different. Eventually however, Woodham opened the scoring with a penalty from in front of the posts after repeated infringements. Old Brentwoods responded well to this and won a line-out through Gooday on the opposition put-in. The backs were unleashed for the first time by Rigden and a well-timed pass from Laws put Hannaway through & the score looked on - but the pass to Peace didn’t go to hand. Five Minutes later & the forwards nicked a scrum against the head once more with some good work from Pembroke and again the backs were off. Fine interplay from Holmes, Laws and Hannaway gained valuable yards…but the scoring touch was lacking, until Cutmore slotted over a well-deserved penalty. Woodham found time before the first half whistle to grind their way down the pitch and score a hotly disputed try to make the score 8 – 3 at the interval. The second half was a more free-flowing affair as gaps appeared where legs were tiring on the heavy surface. Old Brentwood took better advantage of this with some fine running from winger Boyce and from Mullen, Raymond, and Stroud in the forwards & they came close to scoring on a number of occasions. However, Woodham opened up the lead to eight points with a penalty mid way through the half. The Old Brentwoods were unable to recycle the ball and kept on turning over possession, but the first time that they did produce more than 2 phases of possession they left the Woodham defence so tattered that it allowed Holmes to power over in the corner for the Old Boys’ first try. This left the visitors’ knowing that Old Boys knew then that a penalty would be enough to secure extra time, but Woodham hadn’t read the script and promptly virtually from the kick off powered down the field with a driving maul for a converted try in the dying minutes. This brought and end to what was a great, but bruising, quarter-final. Best of luck to South Woodham Ferrers in the next round and the Old Boys will have to wait for another year for any hope of cup success. |
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| Old Brentwoods Scorers Tries - James Holmes |
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| Player Player Award - | |
| Team Prop - Charlie Raymond Scrum Half - Alastair Rigden Subs - Michael Ashby, Perry Reeves, Michael Haddock |
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