UCS Old Boys 7 TABARD 24

UCS Old Boys 7 TABARD 24

In a hard game on Saturday Tabard avenged their only defeat of the season so far with a thrilling 24 points to seven victory over UCS Old Boys. This game, with the permission of the league, was switched to Tabard at the last minute because the UCS ground was waterlogged.

The game started rather meekly with both sides probing the defences of the other and Tabard soon broke through with a great try after seven minutes. From a scrum Tabard executed a miss move in the centre, fullback Joe Cunningham taking the ball on the burst, who fed Neil Hopcroft, coming in from the other wing who in turn passed to wing Matty Roberts for a great try in the corner.

After this the game got harder and both sides played good rugby with plenty of good loose play from both sets of forwards but maybe the Tabard threequarters just had the edge although the UCS defence proved sound until they were caught wrong footed. From a UCS scrum the ball was fumbled at the base and flanker Ashley Hall gathered and made the initial surge before passing to Hopcroft who galloped in for the try. This was the final score in the first half and the teams turned round with Tabard ahead by 10 points to nil.

The second half very much followed the pattern of the first with Tabard possibly mounting more attacks but UCS proved fully capable of testing the Tabard defence which was kept very busy. 10 minutes into the half Tabard pressure on the UCS line was rewarded when second row Darren Kidd forced his way over after Cunningham had been stopped just short. This time Reilly put the conversion over and Tabard were 17 points clear.

UCS then scored a good try after a Tabard attack had broken down and left the defence open. The UCS flanker, Sadler gathered the ball in his own half and shrugging off one tackle made it to the line with stand off Boxer adding the conversion to bring the gap back to 10 points. Then in injury time Tabard notched up the final try when scrum half Andy Murphy went over after a scrum to bring Tabard victory by 24 points to seven.

Team: Cunningham, Hopcroft, Murphy K (Arasa 40m), Taylor-Davies, Roberts, Reilly, Murphy A, Colette, O’Neill, Lake, Kidd (Calnan 60m), O’Connor, Hall, Matheson and Stoba.