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Brentwood U14s 48 Upminster U14s 0
Report by Becky Bassenger

Brentwood power their way to another emphatic win ..


It all started well from the kick off, within minutes the Brentwood boys were camped right on the Upminster try line with the forwards eager to get the first try. Soon after Chris Doble gave Billy Aldous a helpful shove over the line as Billy picked up his second try of the season, already bettering last seasons tally of one and half (one and half you may ask. Well apparently his second try was scored but then disallowed by Ian Dennis so he claims he had one and a half). The conversion from out wide was missed to leave Brentwood 5-0 up.
Brentwood have finally established they need to put a name on the restarts and this area of the game worked particularly well as I don’t recall seeing one dropped restart all day. From a catch at the restart and some slick hands Jake Eagleton was over for his first try of the game. Stuart Frith kicked the conversion from in front, 12 -0 to Brentwood.
With the Brentwood forwards out muscling the Upminster forwards in the lose winning quick ball for the backs, it wasn’t long before Jake was in for his second under the sticks. This time Adam Mathias kicked the conversion, 19-0 Brentwood.
As well as out muscling the Upminster forwards in the lose, the Brentwood pack were also out playing them in the tight, although this wasn’t so obvious in the scrums due to the Upminster scrum half seeming to feed the ball to his number 8. As Pete commented “He may as well just let the scrum half have the ball and miss out the middle man.”
With the forward’s dominant, the backs were putting together some slick moves. A special mention goes to Adam ‘Twinkle Toes’ Mathias for dummy of the day where he pirouetted before offloading not only bamboozling the defence but the spectators as well. We had to remind Adam this was a rugby match not Swan Lake!!
A trademark Chris Doble try followed as he picked up and barged his way over the line, taking a few defenders with him. Stuart Frith, back on, had another horrible kick to take from out wide, which just dropped short. 24-0 Brentwood.
Skipper for the day and unsung hero, Sam Morgan finally got his reward after a huge effort in the lose and some spine breaking tackles when he broke free just inside his own half to run in underneath the sticks. It was quite clear that as soon as he started no one was going to stop him. Finally an easy conversion for Stuart, 31-0 Brentwood.
An excellent step from Twinkle Toes and a well-timed offload put Jake Eagleton under the sticks for his hat trick (that’s a jug please Bill!) and Adam Mathias converted, 38-0.
The next try was made by a spectacular run by our new prop James Payton who had at least half the Upminster team hanging off his left leg before they even got close to stopping him. When they did, he knocked on, scrum to Upminster. The pack put on a huge shove to win the ball against the head, scrum half Mikey Dennis picked up and tried to go for the line. It appeared he wasn’t going to make it until Upminster scored a bit of an own goal by dump tackling him over their own line. Adam hit the post with the conversion leaving the score at 43-0.
Another maul, again set up by a huge run from James, who appeared to be scaring the opposition with his powerful runs (well I wouldn’t personally fancy him running at me at that speed!) was dragged down at the Upminster 22, quick ball was won and some neat hands from the backs put Jordan Hill away in the corner for a well worked try. This left Stuart with yet another horrible conversion, which again he was just short with. 48-0 Brentwood.
This was the final score but due credit to Upminster who fought hard through out the game and were good sports at the end.

From The Westcombe Park website :-

What a great report - So good we named our site after it!!

WPRFC 0 – 62 Brentwood

The score pretty much says it all really. I’m not sure what it is with the U14’s. They seem to play together and really gel one week then the following week they aren’t even at the races. This early in the season, the U14’s are historically slow to get off the mark. Today, we’re not sure it if was it a case of too many larger shandies the night before, but the game looked lost before we had even kicked off. There was no urgency around the pitch and the pre match warm up was littered with lethargy. Brentwood were a big squad, not just the number of boys they brought along but their sheer physical mass dwarfed that of the Combe boys.

I haven’t seen that many pairs of hairy legs since my last arachnophobia evening class. We’re not bitter losers at Combe but birth certificates please!!
After the pre match briefing to our backs on the implications of ‘channel drift’ we chased the ball reasonably enthusiastically for the first 3 or 4 minutes. Phil Bunn getting a Brentwood stud in the face necessitated an immediate replacement. Combe sustained some serious pressure in this 1st quarter going into the 2nd quarter only 14 points down. Things weren’t lost at this stage, or so we thought. They say games are won and lost with the forwards. Today we won hardly any loose ball, lost a lot of our own scrums, lost virtually every line out and when we did win one of the previous three Brentwood where onto us so quick they nearly always won the ball back within 30 seconds. A major change from Bromley last week were it worked so well.

We ended the 2nd quarter 21 points to zero. This margin could have been much greater had it not been for a fine display from Fall Back Luke Maybank. He made two ‘last line of defence’ tackles to keep the score down.

Things didn’t get much better in the 3rd quarter. We did have our best break of the game with one of the centres coming close but a fine last minute Brentwood tackle enabled the ‘big lads’ time to get back and thwart our only real attack. A few more basic errors from Combe didn’t help. We kicked straight into touch too often and our restarts were far too deep which gave our chasing pack no chance of getting to the ball before Brentwood’s big guns had built up another head of steam and floored most of our lads on their way to more tries. Three quarters of the way through the game and we were 31 points to nil down.

In the 4th quarter, with Brentwood obviously getting tired (we wish) they secured another 31 unanswered points to end up worthy winners at 62 – 0. We are much better than the score suggests, albeit not today. If the boys want to progress to the next level and match teams like OE’s, Blackheath and indeed Brentwood they have got to get very serious with their coaching and discipline. No parent likes to stop the boys having fun, but if they turn up on a Sunday morning having had 5 hours sleep round their mates house the night before a game then they will inevitably be lacking stamina to last a full 80 minutes.

The positives from today: We still have a very large squad and the boys will take this beating on the chin and be better players next week. This has happened before and they have come back stronger and more resilient, nearly always ending the season with some silverware.

Action from the game..(click on pictures for full image)


Joel takes on the Westcombe defence

Chris practices his ballet step!