Crewe & Nantwich 47 Hereford 22
A Hereford team with six changes, plus a number of positional changes, made the long journey to Crewe & Nantwich Rugby Club and returned with a try bonus point for their efforts. The home team had the better of early exchanges and opened the scoring with a converted try. The play settled into an end-to-end pattern and in a period of ten minutes, Hereford rattled up 17 points to take a good lead half way through the first half. Later in the half Crewe & Nantwich had the better of things. By the interval they had pulled back the deficit and the teams changed over on equal terms at 17 points apiece. The second half continued with end-to-end football. Errors and poor decision making contributed to Crewe & Nantwich building up a good lead to avenge the heavy defeat they suffered at Wyeside earlier in the season.
“A really tough trip to Crewe & Nantwich. It’s a long journey for us up there and we had a particularly tough game last week, against Old Halesonians.” said Head Coach, Scott Sturdy. “We had to make a number of enforced changes to the team this week. For the first half we played some really good rugby in attack, scored three tries, got ourselves in at half time at seventeen all and got us in position to win the game.
In the second half we made some really poor mistakes in defence and attack.
This allowed them to make a couple of scores early on in the half and the game, kind of, drifted away from us. I was really pleased that the lads dug in and scored a fourth try to secure a bonus point. We have another difficult trip to Stratford next week and need now, to bounce back and put in a good performance in our last away game of the season, before finishing with two games at home. Our 1870s are back in action next week when they play Bishop’s Castle and Onny Valley at Wyeside.”
Both sides showed their intent to attack. Hereford won a lineout and went through eight phases before the ball was dislodged in the tackle. A Crewe & Nantwich attack was able to break a couple of tackles to open the score with a try in the corner, converted from a wide angle. Hereford responded with three tries. They secured possession from a ruck, Connor Sullivan made a determined break, fed Tom Williams who laid off to Joe Vaughan who touched down. Matt Milsom kicked the conversion.
In a purple patch, Hereford added two further tries within ten minutes.
Josh Wright found a good touch from a penalty and the catch and drive from the lineout enabled Lewis Jordan to make the score. A driving run from Jack Goodwin in mid-field was halted and the ball moved wide for Tom Williams to score in the corner. Both conversion attempts were wide. Crewe & Nantwich found more drive and reduced the deficit with a penalty goal and a try. A Hereford attack broke down, their opponents made ground before kicking ahead and winning the race to touch down. The conversion was good and made the scores level at the interval.
Early in the second half, Crewe & Nantwich kicked a penalty to take the lead.
Shortly afterwards they increased it with an unconverted try, when a Hereford clearing kick missed touch and the catcher was able to offload to a team-mate who had an almost clear run to the line. The game was still moving from end-to-end but Hereford errors helped Crewe & Nantwich to increase their lead to 35 – 17 with another penalty goal and a converted try.
To their credit the Hereford lads never gave up. They set up a period of pressure on Crewe & Nantwich and Rhys Roberts was able to drive over for an unconverted try, which secured the try bonus. The final minutes held further drama, Crewe & Nantwich scored an unconverted try. Hereford pressure led to a home yellow card and Crewe & Nantwich intercepted a Hereford loose pass to run the length of the field for the final score. The successful conversion took the final score to 47 points to 22.
Mention should be made of James Lawrence who made a useful senior team debut, showing glimpses of the form that enabled him to score nine tries in eleven appearances for the 1870s.
