Match report Bicester v Abingdon - 05 April

Bicester 17 v Abingdon 12

A highly competent B team took to the field including the last minute arrival of Will A-M to fill in for the injured George - thanks.

A good warm up saw the backs moves being practised with great precision and forwards covering the park in support well - the signs were looking good for a big win. Then the game started!

Some strong individual drives from Jordan & Will saw them power through several levels of poor defence but Abingdon seemed too have enough players to eventually bring the runner down and then our failure to ruck hard and fast resulted in space out wide not being exploited. The game plan and warm-up seemed to have been forgotten, with forwards particularly not gelling as a unit and being far too upright in the contact. PJ, at scrum-half had far too much scrappy ball to distribute, managing this quite well, but taking the edge off of the backs ability to attack with the precision shown before the game.

Jordan powered over for the first try, well converted by Ben Jenks and then Bicester expected the floodgates to open. They didn't as Abingdon managed to rip ball away from individual attacks and frustrate individual runners. Earlier passing would have spread the defence or someone straightening the attack would have disrupted their defence, either causing the breech that Bicester wanted! Eventually, Ben Jenks created some space for himself and crossed the line but could not convert his own try.

Our own poor first up tackles allowed Abingdon to build confidence into the second half the resultant belief took a very fragmented game to 12-12 with a couple of minutes to play. A penalty awarded in front of the posts would have allowed Bicester to kick a win but instead decided to run the ball only to find the desperate Abingdon defence upto the individualism! A last scrum did see a well-constructed move that saw Will feed Harry who, in turn, put PJ in for a score in the corner, giving an idea what could have been!! The conversion missed being the last kick of the game and an ugly win, but a 'W' nonetheless.

Try Scorers: Jordan Hirons, Ben Jenks and PJ Gardiner

Conversion: Ben Jenks

Coaches Man of Match: Charlie Bethell