While we would love to play our preferred brand of champagne rugby week after week, Sunday’s match away at Reeds Weybridge RFC was always going to be an altogether different proposition to last week’s win away at Guildfordians. Reeds Weybridge are a strong Surrey 1 team and having shipped 50 points to us just five months ago while their stars were away at Surrey trials, they had a massive point to prove.

We started slowly and two handling errors and a defensive lapse later were a try down before the match had even started. The scene was set to test of our character as a team and our ability to pull through with the odds stacked against us. While our heavier pack had the better of the forward exchanges, the Reeds backs were fast and powerful and ran with intent, so the game plan was simple – use the forwards to create forward momentum, release the backs from short range, and keep the ball away from their backline!

Our forward pack put in a massive shift with few subs, long grass and in hot, humid conditions, they laboured for the full sixty and gave us the platform that we needed to execute our game-plan. To Reed’s credit, the kind of forward assault that our boys produced normally reduces the opposition pack to a pile of smoking ruins in short order but the Reeds boys stood their ground in the rugby equivalent of hand to hand combat in the trenches of the Somme and made the Bracknell boys work for every inch of ground gained.

But gain ground we did and we were able to produce two hard-fought forward tries, both from second row forward Alexander Robinson, who was a Trojan all afternoon in the tight and tight-loose phases of the game. Massive credit goes to James Walford, captain Ben Clark and Fergus Hill in the front row who were destructive at scrum time, and to Kane O’Leary, Tom Day, Kyle Bruwer and Ben Torr who carried the ball up all day long, taking some massive hits from the Reeds defence in the process. Open-sider Ieaun Dimech was very effective at slowing down their ball at the breakdown and creating turnovers which deprived the Reeds backs of the ball they were so desperate for, and which made our back’s job in defence so much easier.

Scrumhalf Josh Elsey’s service was crisp and he picked out his runners well. At fly-half, Matt Dalrymple had to work hard all day as attack after attack came down the 10-channel. He marshalled his defence well, often hopelessly outnumbered but somehow managing to stop the excellent Reeds backs from getting across the gain-line. On attack he was creative and well supported by Sam Clough at centre and JJ Paling from fullback. JJ had a strong game and was responsible for much of our penetration on attack, with a fantastic try to show for his efforts, as well as some sterling work of defence including a few cracking try-saving tackles.

Credit also needs to go to Sam Faulkner who slotted into 12 to replace injured Alex MacDonald and who put in a massive shift on defence and straightened the line nicely on attack too. Alex came back on later in the game on the wing, where he too did some exceptional work on defence. Max Rickard was looking exciting at 12 until he also had to be replaced as a result of a troublesome knee. On the wing, Ewan Castle’s contribution on defence in the last 20 minutes was probably the difference between us winning and losing the game.

Reeds did not give up at any stage and it’s fair to say that they finished the stronger of the two sides, scoring a great multi-phase try at the end of the game with Bracknell boys out on their feet, the result of making tackle after tackle.

In the end however, it was Bracknell that were ahead on the scoreboard, 17 points to 10, and having won two Surrey division 1 scalps on the road in the first two games of the season, the boys have much to be proud of.

Regards

Andy.