Chingford RFC 23 Tunbridge Wells RFC 21

With a thick covering of dark grey cloud and a stiff cold breeze coming across the pitch it was never going to be a comfortable afternoon. The last time these two sides met was in the incredibly close playoff match which led to us being promoted into this league two seasons ago with Chingford following us up at the start of this season.

Wells started brightly putting together a lovely passage of play with the ball going through hands to Richard Webster who went in at pace and scored in the far corner after 2 minutes. Unconverted. 0 – 5 to Wells. Another 7 minutes and Frank Reynolds made no mistake with the penalty, taking it to 0 – 8. From the restart Chingford’s fullback landed awkwardly damaging his knee and leading to a pause in play for some minutes. When play restarted it seemed Chingford were energised and they came back with a powerful attack which led to a score in the corner. 5 – 8. Both sides continued to work hard in the middle of the field but there was no further score for 15 minutes. With Wells conceding too many penalties in the danger zone Chingford took advantage converting two taking the score to 11 – 8 just short of half time. But then with a Chingford infringement around 20m from their line Frank Reynolds kicked a penalty to the corner for a lineout. The ball was successfully spun out to the backs and after a few probing attacks fed out to Ryan Taylor-Dennehy who took it in for the score in the corner on the stroke of half time. 11 – 15.

Chingford started well in the second half and after some sustained pressure the ref determined that Mike Doherty had his hands in the ruck and was sent to the bin for 10 minutes. Chingford capitalised with a try taking the score to 18 – 15. Three minutes later Wells replied with another penalty drawing the scores level. 18 – 18. And ten minutes later, another. 18 – 21. With the light well and truly fading, and the clock moving slowly towards full time Wells found themselves back down to 14 again after further pressure on the Wells line resulted in a yellow for Josh Hawkins. Chingford piled on the pressure and eventually went over for their final try. 23 – 21 Full time.

Head Coach, Simon Whatling, said “Clearly we were all disappointed at the end of the game. Discipline let us down and we weren’t as accurate as we should have been. We go again next week with the arrival of Dorking.”

TWRFC v Dorking RFC Saturday 1st December 2pm.

Bruce Elliott