Rochford 97 Chelmsford 12
London North East 2

Chelmsford travelled to Rochford on Saturday with a young and inexperienced team. Chelmsford are having considerable problems with injuries and other unavailabilities at the moment and came up against a team far superior in most aspects of the game. Rochford have an influx of ‘new players’ mainly from the Southend Rugby Club and will no doubt be in the promotion position at the end of the season. Their second row were particularly impressive with Tom Corbet being their man of the match.
As was the problem in last week league game, Chelmsford could get little or no clean ball from either scrum or lineout and with Rochford being fast and excellent ball handlers it was always going to be a one way street regarding try scoring. In total Rochford scored fifteen tries, many of them from catch and drive from the lineout and from five yard scrums which were driven over. Their forwards also linked extremely well making the ball available time and time again after being tackled.
Chelmsford did get on the scoreboard by scoring tries in each half. Firstly when Marcus Pottinger followed up a kick from Ben Bayley, grabbed the loose ball to outstrip the opposition and score under the posts. Secondly when Warren Woolmer in the second half intercepted a pass and ran in unopposed from thirty yards.
The Chelmsford team battled on to the end and never gave up. Their start to the season was never going to be easy with difficult away games especially against Rochford who on their performance would cope comfortably in the league above. Chelmsford do now need to regroup, get their players fit and available, allow the coaching staff, to put their skills into practice and to gain confidence
Director of Rugby Eddie said afterwards Rochford are a exceptional team for this level and we knew the first few weeks of the season were going to be tough due to the amount of players who would be unavailable to play.
We made nine changes today from last weekend and for some of our players it was there first taste of London 2 . Unfortunately it came against a team that 14 of its players having played National 2 and 3 rugby at Southend.
So the gulf in the abilities of the squads was always going to be against us . Hats off to Rochford they did what they had to do but i am proud of the boys who kept playing until the final whistle
Next week Chelmsford play their first home game of the season against Cantabrigians kick off 3pm