Essex U18's V Berkshire U18's

Sunday 2nd December 2007

In very windy and wet conditions, Berkshire kicked off and the Essex girls immediately took the initiative and made their way into the Berkshire 20m zone, where they set up camp and refused to leave, despite every attempt that Berkshire made to clear the danger. There came a series of scrums, (I lost count after 7!), in which the Essex pack showed their dominance, only for ‘knock on’s to occur before Essex could try to get the ball over the line – mainly due to the difficult conditions, but Berkshires stout defence was also forcing some of the errors. The deadlock was broken when the Essex forwards formed a ruck on the 5m line, and Frenchie picked the ball up and ran through a defender to score a typical flankers try 5 -0.
From the kick off, Berkshire came on the attack – producing some big tackles on the Essex girls, and trying to force their way into Essex territory. An Essex player was sent to the bin for 10 minutes for an un-intentional incident, but this just seemed to fire the Essex girls up – down to 14 girls, the scrum was very effective and Essex pressed forward. After the binned payer came back on, Essex carried on pressing forward, and at least three try scoring chances went begging due to ‘the final pass’ not being given early enough, and the half ended with Essex having the majority of the territory, but just 1 try on the board.
Essex kicked off the second half and as you would expect, Berkshire made some in-roads to the Essex half. But the Essex girls were in no mood to let anything through, and were very quick to spot where Berkshire were going to attack – always putting in tackles to stop the momentum before it had time to build. The next Essex score came from a scrum within Essex’s own half – Essex won the ball and the forwards moved it forward in a series of rucks and mauls. It was then passed out to the backs where three passes later, it found Danni, who ran around the last Berkshire defender to score in the corner 10 – 0
There then followed a period of play where neither team could make much headway, centred around the half way line. A Berkshire player went down with an injury which caused the game to be halted for 6 or 7 minutes. (We wish her the very best with her recovery.)
After the restart, Essex again won the territory battle and there followed a try by Sarah Carmen (pick and drive from ruck 5m out) 15 – 0, and then another from Charlie (forwards drive) to make the final score 20 – 0.


Final score: Essex 20 Berkshire 0

The coaches want me to pass on their thanks to ALL of the girls within the Essex U18 squad, for what has been a absolutely fantastic County season – and they hope that many of you will go on to be successful in the Regional programme which starts in January.

match report courtesy of your intrepid reporter Phil (Clark Kent) French