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Cutting it fine against Kent. Sunday 2nd March 2008
An exhilarating injury time try from Southend’s Ban Timson secured a win for Essex by 25 points to 20 over Kent in the final pool match of the RFU County Championships. Essex now await to find out who they meet from the other London Division pool in the London Division Festival on the 30th March at Aldershot.
Essex began the game looking strong and in the opening skirmishes looked as though they would be able to repeat the success of Middlesex over their Kent rivals. But this was a much stronger Kent side and they had other ideas. Breaking out from the early pressure, Kent charged down the left wing to open the scoring with a scrambled try in the corner during which Barking’s Adam Shepherd unfortunately sustained an injury to his wrist and had to be replaced.
From the restart Kent regained possession of the ball and working their way down the centre towards the Essex line found a break in the Essex defence to score their second try and take the score to 0 -10. It took another quarter of an hour for Essex to finally make their mark with a try of their own. The pack and backs worked hard to make ground in the Kent half, putting Kent on the defensive. Having managed to work the ball up the left flank and tying in the Kent forwards with some well worked rucking and mauling, the ball was finally released to the backs and Rochford’s Dan Needham, on his debut for the County playing at full back, burst over the line for Essex’s first try of the match making the score 5 -15.
The Kent response was to score another try almost immediately and this time under the posts. Sidcup’s Jon West suddenly found himself with some space off the back of a ruck and ran over, virtually unopposed for Kent’s third try of the match which was duly converted to make the score 5 -17. A Penalty from Southend’s Perry Sansom just before half time kept Essex in touch as both teams took a well earned break with the half time score at 8 - 17.
A scintillating run from the half way line just after the break by Essex Captain Perry Sansom gave Essex some heart, Scything his way through some slack Kent defensive work he ran all the way, on his own to score the try of the match under the posts and give himself an easy conversion to bring the score up to 13 – 17. However, a penalty to Kent in front of the Essex posts some five minutes later extended Kent’s lead to 13-20.
With neither side giving an inch, it was difficult to see where the next score would come from but a breakdown in the middle of the pitch allowed the Essex backs to move the ball. With Sansom and Vaughan opening up the Kent defence it was Lee Wiseman that found the ball bounce up into his hands just short of the line and over he went to take the score to 20 – 20. With the conversion being missed the last 20 minutes of the match could have gone either way but it was Essex’s strength of character that once again shone through when in the final moments of injury time Ben Timson secured the win as he and the pack chased a hacked though ball down the left wing to score in the corner. Though the conversion was missed the referee blew the whistle for full time and Essex had pulled the game out of the bag 25 - 20
Shortly after the final whistle news came through that Middlesex had convincingly beaten Surrey and therefore headed up the pool on points difference. President Mike Drinkwater said, “We have not lost a match at U20’s in two years but we just cannot make the cut to go further in this competition.” Coach Dean Cutting was pleased with his teams performance” These boys have worked hard and have blended into a very useful team. I am grateful for the support of the clubs who have released their players to the County for this seasons campaign. We still have a chance of some silverware in the Divisional U20’s festival at the end of March and perhaps now the pressure is off we can allow the lads to just relax and go out and enjoy the day.”
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