Sudbury 38 Chelmsford 3
London North East 2
Chelmsford travelled to Sudbury with a changed side to play the second placed team in the league, who are looking for promotion. They were eventually well beaten although for a large part of the match it was a highly contestable as to the result.
For the first fifteen minutes of the game Chelmsford were in control of the ball and really should have scored on a number of occasions but it was Sudbury who broke away spreading the ball wide before coming inside for the centre to score. Chelmsford hit back through a well taken penalty by Cameron Arnott. Sudbury were now putting pressure onto Chelmsford and a feature of their game throughout the match was their ability to find a pass to a team mate in the tackle who was often coming onto the ball at speed. This was the case when the Sudbury’s winger, who had a very good game, was released to score in the corner. Chelmsford were not out of it and their set scrum was playing havoc with the opposition, and again came close to scoring. Half Time 14-3
Sudbury started the second half in determined mood and scored an excellent try, the ball going through a number of hands at pace before the back row forward put the ball down. Again Chelmsford came close to scoring through a kick through, which the Chelmsford winger was adjudged to have knocked on before putting the ball down. It was only in the last ten minutes when Sudbury got totally on top when Chelmsford gave away three tries [21 points] by poor ball retention when trying to force the game.
DOR Eddie Gooby said after the game when you look at the scoreboard it looks like a big lost. In truth we were really competitive until the last 5 minutes.
I thought we played a little bit to expansive at times and went away from what had served us really well in the previous 4 games. We played to much rugby behind the gain line instead of being more direct with our forwards.
Over the past month we have allowed our forwards to control the game when we are near the tryline but today we moved the the ball to quickly away from great scoring opportunities we have to be more patient and go through the phasis and trust our ability to score through our close quarter work and through our backs . It one of those game when you feel you left a game with nothing but could have come away with much more.
The effort the whole squad put in today was fantastic and we need to focus on our last five games . With all the teams around us winning we still have a lot of hard work ahead of us.
Chelmsford have no game next week but have a very important game against Ipswich at Coronation Park on the 3rd of March