Sat 9 Dec 2023
And so, for the second time this season, the Development Team continued their season of away games and ventured to Bishop’s Stortford - this time with no need to hurry back to Letchworth.
This game was a joy to watch. All season the team has been trying to emulate their 1st team colleagues in having a dominate pack and exciting backs. Today, the pack again dominated their opposition with strong performances by all the forwards with the backs, bolstered by the presence of “Flash” and “Stadds” the back line always looked dangerous. Will Rooney again putting in a strong performance at Full Back with a great debut by Jeff Rice on the wing.
The deadlock was broken early in the first half with Hugo Lennie seemingly sending the whole opposition line a dummy and waltzing through for a try under the posts. Shortly afterwards, Andy Young picked up a scrappy ball to dive over from about 10 yards out. Following the restart Letchworth enjoyed possession with Flash and Stadds, building on the strong “pattern” possession of the forwards and committing 3 or four players to tackle them each time they took the ball. We turned around at half time at 10-0.
As the second half started, the team were focussed on making sure their intensity level did not drop with their energy levels. Shortly after the restart from a scrum in centre field Tyler Uys, back at 9 after a few weeks out, made a break and run 20 metres to score under the posts with Hugo adding the extra points. Matt Olley replaced Hugo after 45 minutes.
Following a scrum that turned and starting to disintegrate, James Buchanan appeared from loose head like a genie from the bottle carrying the ball and charging toward the opposition goal line only to be tackled 8 metres out but managing to off load to the following up Andy Young who shimmied over for his second try. Matt Olley landed the extra points. The score was now 24-0. As we moved into the final quarter Stortford kicked over and found the safe hands of Will Rooney who, true to form, decided to run straight back and through them to score an excellent solo try from 40 yards out. Matt Olley added the conversion.
Late on the Stortford coach requested we allow them to use a 4th sub as we, mainly the back row of Mike Gray, Jude Schoeman and Andy Young, had broken four of their players. Given the short time left Letchworth agreed only to see said coach sell our back line a dummy and saunter in for a conciliation try with a few minutes to go. This was converted and the final score as 7-31 to Letchworth. Another good league win which sees us stay top of our league and Letchworth man of the match was Hew Williams.
On a side note, Letchworth were incredibly lucky that the Stortford photographer on the day was the incredible Elli Birch from Boots and Hooves Photography and she has very kindly shared the photos with us (shown right). Thank you Elli! See more images in our photo gallery.
