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TABARD 37 Hampstead 13 – London League 2 North West

Andy Murphy, Tabards scrum half scored three scintillating tries in an inspirational performance on Saturday, setting up Tabard’s 37 points to 13 victory over a powerful Hampstead side.

Nobody could have foreseen the outcome in the opening quarter of the game with Hampstead applying a lot of pressure on the Tabard defence and keeping them pinned in their own half. Hampstead should have been rewarded with a simple penalty but the ball was skewed wide and Tabard breathed again. It was due to a long kick out of defence by Tabard’s stand off Jack Reilly that the home side eventually got into their opponents half and from a scrum close to Murphy gathered the ball, grubber kicked through the Hampstead defence and touched down for his first try against the run of play. Reilly added the conversion. Hampstead immediately responded and from the resulting pressure their standoff Mold dropped a goal.

Hampstead kept the pressure on and it was only Tabard’s powerful scrummage and solid defence that kept them in the game. Reilly was able to stretch Tabard’s lead with a long penalty goal when Hampstead were caught coming in the side of the ruck but Hampstead then finally outflanked the Tabard defence and their fullback Craigs scored in the corner. Just before half time Reilly kicked another penalty and the teams turned round with Tabard ahead by 13 points to eight.

Just after the break Murphy made a searing run from his own half but this time, with cover coming across, he fed wing Neil Hopcroft for the try. Two minutes later Murphy worked his magic again. This time, from turnover ball deep in his own half, he went on another searing run through the defence to score under the posts giving Reilly an easy conversion. Tabard now put pressure on Hampstead and centre Tom Taylor-Davies eventually forced his way over the line for a try.

Murphy then got his hat trick, this time number 8, Scott Stoba, picked up at the base of the scrum and passed to Murphy, again in his own half. Murphy’s low powerful running again took him through the defensive cordon and he kept going to the line for the try which Reilly converted.

In injury time Hampstead’s wing, Loakman, went over to bring up the final score, a win for Tabard by 37 points to 13.

Team: Cunningham, Thomas, Arasa (Davis 64m), Taylor-Davies, Hopcroft, Reilly, Murphy, Collette (Lake W 52m), O’Neill, Lake B, Kidd, O’Connor, Hall, Matteson (Calnan 73m) and Stoba.