Junior Colts

Chester 10 - Sandbach 10 Sun 17 December 2000 You know it's christmas when the Great Escape is on the telly, well on Sunday there was an early showing as the junior colts took the staring role in the mud at Chester to share the points, and secure a valuable away league point. With the Chester first team pitch badly cut-up from the previous day we were trouped across the bridge to the hillside pitch. Chester having won the toss, elected to play with the slope in the first half, and as expected, at every opportunity, even from good clean possession, kicked deep, trying and pin Sandbach down at the bottom of the hill. Chester had not reckoned on the excellent positional sense of Sandbach fullback Dymond, who time and again gather the ball cleanly to relieve the pressure with fine touch kicks. However, with all the elements in their favour, Chester constructed numerous try scoring opportunities, with only resolute Sandbach tackling, and the final passes being missed, keeping Chester out. With five minutes of the first half remaining Dymond suffered a knock and as Sandbach had to regroup with Tom Hughes dropped back to fullback, and Buckle coming onto the wing, Chester took their opportunity to squeeze over in the corner for an unconverted try. As the half time whistle blew Sandbach could feel a little relieved to be only five points adrift, and as the pitch was now resembling something reminiscent of the Somme, any thoughts of attacking Chester with Sandbach's speedy backs was a non starter. As the second half became a battle of attrition for the forwards, with extremely difficult handling conditions producing numerous unenforced errors, this gave the Chester forwards regular possession, which they used to drive close to the ruck and mauls, to make the hard yards up the hill and again threaten the Sandbach line, time and again the Sandbach defence held Chester out, but eventually after conceding a penalty five metres out Chester opted for the scrummage and their winger took a crash ball to cross the whitewash five metres in from touch, again the conversion was missed. With only seven minutes remaining Sandbach were able to step-up a gear and following a kick deep into the Chester half the forward won quick ruck ball which allowed flyhalf Bird to wrong foot the Chester defence with a clever miss move involving centres Massey and Jerman to score ten metres from the posts. Pickles calmly stroked the ball between the sticks for the extra two points. With all to play for and two minutes remaining Sandbach won back possession and returned to deep into the Chester twenty two, only to loose possession under the posts, and concede a penalty in the vain attempt at retrieving the ball. However the drama continued, as the referee saw foul play from a petulant Chester forward, and reversed the penalty. Pickles, from ankle deep mud, stepped up and again dissected the posts, to hear the referee blow the final whistle. Sandbach had battled well against all the elements, and a spirited Chester team, to come away with a valuable league point, and look forward to the return fixture on a dry(?), flat, Bradwall Road in March. Team:- Falvey; Saywell; Johnson; Hughes R; Tonge; Cushnie; Pickles; Morgan; Meyrick; Bird; Howard; Massey; Jerman; Hughes T; Dymond; Buckle. Brian Meyrick