Redingensians 60 - Reading 15

Reading kindly fulfilled this fixture at short notice after our original challengers pulled out following the news that our County players would be away. This gave our fringe players a chance for some good game time, & Reading the chance to assess their players who are currently walking away with the Berkshire B League. Both teams were missing players due to County & Half Term commitments, & both teams had players playing out of position. Rawsthorn at 15 instead of his usual 7 was a case in point. As was both teams playing wingers who were making their debut for their perspective sides. This is what friendlies should be used for!

Reading kicked off towards the golf course end of the pitch, Clark gathered comfortably & set up the first attack for the men in blue. From the first set piece scrum the ball skewed out on the blindside of the ref, possibly illegally, however ‘Ensians showed their attacking intent & ran in the first try. A second followed in a similar pattern before the ref decided to have a look at what was going on in the put in – strangely it all settled down at that point!

The first half was played at a helter skelter pace with both sides trying to playing running rugby. Reading’s half backs were having a torrid time in defence against Boyden in particular. Espley at 10 was having one of his strongest games for a while, feeding off quick ball & releasing Hammerton & Cook to gain decent yards. Rawsthorn looked solid at 15, taking a couple of decent high balls & making some strong attacking runs. However the half time score of 36 – 5 doesn’t do justice to Reading. Their 10 – 12 partnership kicked & passed intelligently & their new lad with 19 on his back had a storming first half, capped with a well worked team try.

The second half started with Reading in the ascension, indeed they scored the first points of the new half, again a well worked try with the ball passing through a number of pairs of hands before being dotted down to the right of the posts. ‘Ensians realised that they were still in for a hard match & upped their game. The impressive Strasburger made the first of three lung busting (for the ref) runs only to be tackled into touch close to the try line by the tracking Reading defender who never gave up the run. The two tries of the match then followed each other. Reading attacked strongly down the left wing & looked to be on for a certain try until Bowden ripped the ball in the tackle on his own 5m line & promptly ran the length of the pitch to score under the posts. Reading countered with a sweet move with pop passes, good support play, handling & running to score a try in the far left hand corner. I believe it was the scorer’s first points for the club, he’ll have to go some to score a better try!

The final score was 60-15 to ‘Ensians, however as the title suggests, the score doesn’t tell the whole story. Reading played 100% rugby for the entire 50 minutes & probably deserved to be closer at the end. Perhaps the fitness of the ‘Ensians side told. Certainly the ability to bring on impact players such as McGillivary & Large helped the cause. Equally having a player like Boden who scores for fun from deep is something any side in Berkshire would wish for.

There were a lot of positives for ‘Ensians today. Steele & Hammerton got their first points of the season. Towell who’s been with us for two weeks got a good run out. The handling & support play was outstanding, especially in the first half. The final positive is that roughly 40 players got a decent game of rugby, played in a good spirit.

Finally, Reading are currently top of the Berkshire B League. There is some talk that they won’t get promoted at the end of the season. If this is true then it’s a total travesty & makes a mockery of having a league system. I for one hope that we lock horns in League rugby next season.
MOTM –
Ensians – Rawsthorn
Reading – Smart
Rawsthorn was cruelly denied victory in the drink off by an off the ball incident that the ref failed to spot!
Ensian Scorer’s
Boden – 30 points
Cook – 5 points
Steele – 5 points
Hammerton – 5 points
Strasburger – 5 points
Rawsthorn – 6 points
Clark – 4 points