Maidenhead didn’t help themselves by getting three yellow cards, and a red card a few minutes from the end of the second half. Marlow on the other hand received none.

The first half was dominated by Marlow who spent nearly all of it in the Maidenhead half although the Maidenhead forwards had the upper hand at the set scrums and marginally at the line-outs. This was the reason that Marlow only turned round 3 – 0 up at halftime despite Maidenhead only having 13 men on the pitch at the break.

Gradually, as the second half progressed, Maidenhead started to exert some pressure and it was as a result of this pressure and an over eagerness to get the first score that turned the game on it’s head. Marlow intercepted a Maidenhead pass on their own 22 metre line and ran the length of the pitch to score under the posts. Maidenhead then worked their way back into the game and had a couple of long range penalties gone over it might have been a different story. But the exchanges got more and more fractious as the referee lost control until a mass brawl erupted on about the half-hour mark. Maidenhead did have another scoring chance in the last few minutes when Ed Poulding went off down the right wing, but he was hauled down about 5 metres short. Another mini-brawl saw Maidenhead receive a red card and then Marlow drove over from a series of pick and drives to make the final score 15 – 3 to Marlow.

In summary the Maidenhead forwards did enough to get a good supply of ball but the backs never got going. With two more tough fixtures to end the season Maidenhead may well drop into the bottom half of the table.

Written by David ‘The Pencil’ Anthony.