South West One

South West One
Bracknell 9 v Old Patesians 35
By Henry La
By losing, Bracknell missed a chance to nail their promotion prospects firmly into the minds of the league leaders when they were well beaten by the Gloucester team at Lily Hill as fellow contenders Redingensians and Coney Hill were also defeated. Bournemouth have now moved into third place while Bracknell drop to forth but, only four points from the second promotion place.
Coach Chris Sheasby was clearly unhappy and frustrated with his team’s performance. When asked how he planned to move on from this thrashing he said, “The funny thing is that we played some nice rugby but the simple fact is that my players went away from their game plan and ended up doing things they know they shouldn’t. Look, the referee had given five penalties against us for holding onto the ball (after being tackled). They know how to sort out this situation and what upsets me is that we were not able to make decisions on the field to do that.”
Asked if he felt he needed to change some players he was firm in defence of his team saying, “No, we play well but the problem is that the players are impatient, they tried to get all the points back in one rush instead of taking their time. How often in the second half did we get into their 22 and when we did, we tried to force our way over or gave the ball away instead of taking our time.
If you don’t listen to the calls from your fellow players you come a cropper and we came a cropper! We were the instigators of our own downfall because if we had listened we would have scored two tries, I’m not saying we would have won but it would have been close. But let’s give Old Pats credit because they are a good hard working team, if not a flashy one”
Looking at positives, Sheasby felt that, “Budge (full back) had a good game he broke tackles, he never dropped a high ball, he didn’t knock on and he ran and chipped nicely.” Though Old Pats scored from a Budge move at the end Sheasby was sympathetic by saying, “All he did was to try to make something happen.”
Referring to missed opportunities by the wingers Sheasby said, “They are staying too wide and too flat. Why be eight yards away (from the passer) when you can narrow it to six and cut down the risk!”
Sheasby had another positive when he spoke about the lineout saying, “If you think about it they were suppose to have a good lineout but we had no trouble with them by winning at will and making good yardage but then we usually took the wrong option. Our decision making was poor throughout the game.”

The match was set up when, fresh from defeating promotion contenders last week, Old Pats couldn’t believe their luck as Bracknell gifted them a try after just one minute that followed a combination of errors, ending with the normally reliable fly half Jervis Manupenu having his defensive kick charged down for Giles Potter to score. The conversion was missed by fly half Adam Seager but he did little wrong for the rest of the afternoon.
Now leading 5-0 the visitors had their tails up and continued to press deep into Bracknell territory finally earning a penalty which Seager scored from that pushed the lead to 0-8 after four minutes.
Just four minutes later Bracknell opened their account as Old Pats concede a penalty within Skipper Ben Nowak’s kicking range. He didn’t disappoint and narrowed the score to 3-8.
It looked like the home team had weathered Old Pats early storm and settled into their usual game plan but, they let the visitors off the hook by failing to tackle the speedy winger Henry Bird. He ran from his wing, cutting into midfield and evaded the listless home defence to score under the posts. Seager’s converted and Old Pats had a useful 3-15 lead that was increased ten minutes later to 3-18 with another Seager penalty.
Now, the home team were in a desperate situation as, the leagues best defence shipped 18 points in 19 minutes. The reason was that the Lily Hill team could not match the visitors work rate and ball handling skills. In desperation Bracknell infringed causing the referee to yellow card flanker Rudal Aiono for one offence too many.
In Bracknell’s defence, Mr Owen was also having a refereeing nightmare with some glaring errors of judgement and inconsistence that seemed to go against the home team but, this is no excuse, as Bracknell have pressed their luck with officials too often this season. The penalties count in the first half of 10-5 against Bracknell is an indicator of indiscipline but at least 4 decisions were questionable.
Old Pats took advantage of the one man advantage to outnumber the Bracknell defence as centre Barney Pascal scored under the posts. Seager converted to increase the lead to 3-25. To their credit, Bracknell still fought back and just before half time a Nowak penalty narrowed the score to 6-25.
It was clearly going to be an uphill battle for the home team in the second half and soon after the restart their enthusiasm was quickly dented when Old Pats were awarded a penalty that Seager again comfortably converted, so the hill got steeper at 6-28.
Now the fighting spirit stirred and Bracknell started to find their form with terrific runs by Budge, Manupenu and Kenny Barry. Opportunities then fell to wingers Stuart Mackay and Nick Shears but poor handling and taking the wrong option prevented 3 clear cut tries from being scored.
If they had scored from these chances, it would have appeared that there wasn't a lot between the two teams but in reality, the visitors looked far more dangerous when on the ball. Despite another Nowak penalty after 50 minutes, Old Pats had the final say as centre Ben Davies scored just before the end of the game for them to run out comfortable 9-35 winners.

**** Courtesy of Bracknell Times