Old Streetonians 15 - 8 Datchworth

Datchworth 1XV travelled down to Hackney marsh to play Old Streetonians on a day when most other games in London North west 3 were cancelled due to the poor weather conditions.

Before the game had even started Datch could see this was going to be a game governed by the weather. As the home side kicked off the heavens opened and torrential rain poured down for the first 10 minutes making the ball almost impossible to handle. Datch were clearly struggling with the wet weather, having trained on an artificial surface for the past month, and were making increasing amounts of handling errors handing the advantage to Old Streetonians.

Eventually these errors told and Old Street, striking to a game plan that was far better suited to the bad weather by keeping the ball tight, broke through the Datch line and went over for the first score of the game. 5-0.

Datchworth tried to inject some tempo into their game but again the handling errors were putting them on the back foot. This, coupled with the fact the home side were living very close to the off side line without the referee penalising them, meant Datchworth couldn't link any phases together and eventually a dropped ball gave the home side the opportunity to run through and score the second of the game taking the home side in 10-0 at half time.

From the restart Datchworth seemed to pull themselves together and finally started to link some phases together. Strong running from the Datch back row made some holes in the home sides defence. Strong pressure eventually led to a Datch scrum 5 meters out from old streets try line. A dominant scrum, which won 3 penalties in a row and really should have led to old streets prop Being sent off, eventually saw Staurt Young bundle over from the base scoring Datch's first points.

It looked like there was going to be a way back into the game for Datch but unfortunately the scrum had to go uncontested taking away their advantage. This killed the game and the remainder played out in the centre of the field. Captain Matt Francis put the faith in his kicker Tom Wood in the dying minutes to secure a losing bonus point by kicking a penalty and the game finished 15-8.