Tewkesbury News, Tewkesbury Sport, Tewkesbury Leisure - From The Tewkesbury & Evesham Admag

Missing men key to misery on road

From the archive, first published Wednesday 7th Dec 2005.

Beaconsfield 33, Stow 7pts

STOW were as well beaten as the scoreline suggests but they did travel without four key players - and that made a difference.

A reshuffled side stuck to their task but in the end the well-drilled home side, including a 100 per cent kicker. took the spoils.

Early signs saw the Buckinghamshire hosts retain possession and string phases together and they were soon in the lead courtesy of three easily converted penalties.

The Oddington Roaders did manage to string some moves together but they struggled to find any consistency.

They also seemed to fall foul of the referee and conceded countless penalties.

From one of these, the ball was kicked into the corner, the line-out won and then driven over for the first try. The home side's in-form kicker coolly slotted over the extra points.

Just before the break, Stow were unlucky to lose Craig Chapman to the bin when he was harshly singled out as the culprit.

Benefiting from the extra man, Beaconsfield created an overlap to score their second converted try.

The second half saw a much better visiting effort and debutant second row Alex Willens produced some bullocking runs but a deserved try wasn't forthcoming.

The home side kicked their fourth penalty before Stow lost Mat Hicks to the bin.

Although the second half was fairly even, Stow just couldn't score while their opponents touched down for a third time when the visitors lost possession on the 22 and the ball went wide for the touch down in the corner.

Stow kept going and richly deserved their late try. Tom Davies made a good break before Craig Chapman took possession and crashed and carved his way through several tackles to score under the posts leaving Duncan Smith an easy conversion.

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