Castle Cary 15, B&A RFC 2nds 8 (09/11/13)

Bridgwater travelled to Castle Cary with a strong looking side, hoping to continue building on the promise that has been showing in recent weeks. This was always going to be a tough game against a Cary first team sporting their usual large pack.

The game kicked off with Bridgy playing down the slope. Neither team could establish any real fluency in the opening exchanges; however it was soon clear that the Bridgwater scrum, who were so dominant last weekend, were up against a far better scrummaging unit, conceding several against the head throughout the game.  Both teams were regularly knocking on and conceding turnover at rucks, making for a scrappy opening 25 minutes.

Bridgy had opportunities to pressure the Cary line from some favourably positioned lineouts, but the larger Cary pack were able to disrupt the ensuing mauls, on numerous occasions. Eventually one lineout drive went to plan, was stopped short of the Cary line, Hill quickly spread the ball to Ball, who produced a moment of brilliance/stupidity, loosing the out the back door to be regathered by Jon Hill who shipped the ball on to Jay Owens who crashed over from short range. Hill pushed the conversion wide.

This seemed to spark a bit of life into the game, Bridgwater gathered the restart and hit the ball up a number of times before moving the ball back for a clearance kick. The kick was charged down and a lucky bounce if the ball straight into Cary hands combined with some neat offloads and good support runs lead to the Cary openside going over for a score on the stroke of halftime. The conversion was also missed leaving the scores level at 5 all.

Following the restart, Cary used their large forwards to good effect, crashing forwards around the ruck fringes, and one missed tackle lead to a try which was this time converted leaving the score at 12- 5 to Cary.

This sparked Bridgwater into life again, who on several occasions made breaks and incursions into Cary territory, but were not quite able to string enough rugby together to get a score, until Hill was able to slot a penalty to take the score to 12 – 8.

Late in the game Cary scored another penalty to take the score to 15-8 with only a few minutes left to play, however this was the last real action of the game.

Bridgwater can be pleased with another strong defensive performance in what was always going to be a tough game, and maybe just a little more accuracy when on the attack could have sealed the win for them, however they had to settle for just the single losing bonus point.

Next weekend is a week off, before Chard are welcomed to College Way.

Team: Steward, Barnett, Smith, Owens, Willis, J.Hill, T.Hill, Saunders, Sturdy, Ball, Page-Symonds, Northey, Lipscomb, Sluman, Stradling (Capt)

Reps: (all used) Moulding, Windsor, Dickenson

Try: Owens

Pen: J.Hill

Category: 2nd Previews / Reports -XV, 2nd XV News