A bright, warm and sunny afternoon. A hard and dry pitch but with plenty of grass promised a fast running game and that is what we got in the second half.

Maidenhead’s forwards gradually wore down a much bigger pack and achieved almost complete dominance at the set scrums winning a lot of turnover ball. The line-outs worked well most of the time and as a consequence as the game went on the backs were getting plenty of good ball from the set pieces. The rucks and mauls were a different matter as there they managed to lose more than their fair share of ball at the breakdowns. Not helped admittedly by an overly fussy referee. But it was a good and well deserved win.

The first score came from Bicester who were awarded a penalty on the 22 metre line and in front of the posts. Maidenhead should have scored a couple of times but a forward pass and then a simple outside pass was butchered. Perhaps too much playing sevens during training isn’t such a good idea? A score did come though and it was a forwards try. A Maidenhead line-out on the Bicester 5 metre line was well taken and the resulting maul very well organised to yield an excellent try for Paul Savage. The conversion was missed by Rob Wilkins as were a couple of difficult penalty attempts to leave the half time score at 5 – 3 to Maidenhead.

The second half started with a bang when quick ball from the forwards was spun along the line, Ed Poulding beat his opposite number and put Ieuan Moorcraft in under the posts for a converted try.

Then almost immediately a Maidenhead line-out on the Bicester 5 metre line and a catch and drive saw another well worked try by all the forwards. The scorer in the middle of the drive was Wouter de Jaeger.

By now, midway through the second half, the forwards were well on top and the opposition were reduced to ponderous solo runs by a couple of their biggest (and slowest) forwards. These were easily countered by the Maidenhead forwards gang-tackling them. It’s an old maxim that the forwards determine who wins a game of rugby and the backs by how many points. So it was at Bicester when the backs, now getting plenty of ball, ran in another couples of tries.

The first saw Alex Menard (having just come on as sub) sell a dummy pass and make an inside break to go in under the posts. Then Lester Martin got his “usual” wingers try, outpacing the opposition to dot down in the corner. That made it 29 – 3 to Maidenhead. Finally for the last 5 minutes or so Bicester camped in the Maidenhead 22 and eventually got over in the corner. Final score 29 –8 to Maidenhead.

A good result firmly based on the performance of the forwards.

Written by David ‘The Pencil’ Anthony.