London Scottish Highlanders 0-36 Tonbridge Juddian, The Shield Division 2, 8th December 2012
On a fine winter’s afternoon a very useful Tonbridge side ran out comfortable winners in an open game with lots of running rugby. The Highlanders put in a commendable effort, with determined defending, but were unable to convert their relatively limited chances into scores. Several potential opportunities were frustratingly lost with simple knock-ons.
Tonbridge attacked from the start and narrowly missed a penalty shot, but moved the Scottish clearance kick slickly along the line to put their speedy winger over in the corner. The touchline conversion just crept over the bar. While Tonbridge continued to look the likelier side, Scottish dug in well in defence, May led the forward charges and the backs mounted several long range attacks, mainly through Perrin and Alkin. Both sides went close with penalty kicks, before Tonbridge eventually dropped a goal to take a ten point lead at half-time.
Tonbridge effectively settled the game from the restart scoring in the right corner, then extended their lead ten minutes later with similar try in the left corner. A Scottish line-out overthrow was punished with a Tonbridge break from 35 metres for a fourth try.
Oliveria was illegally taken out from following up his kick ahead, but Scottish lost the subsequent line-out from the penalty to the corner. Tonbridge returned down the pitch with an impressive series of offloads, and a decisive break for their final score. In the last few minutes, Scottish mounted a series of pick and go drives just short of the Tonbridge line, but were denied a deserved consolation try by defence fair and foul.
Team: 15 Joel Maisey; 14 Mark Oliveria, 13 Josh Graham, 12 Charlie Marchant-Rowe, 11 Aaron Perrin; 10 Will Alkin, 9 Tom MacArthur; 8 Stuart May, 7 Mike Howlett, 6 Charlie Howard; 5 Hamish Coventry, 4 Alasdair Reid; 3 Paul Webster, 2 Marcus Bailey, 1 Will Bayliss-Brown.
Replacements: Fraser Millar, Eliot Fallon, Mike Jury, Rob Fraser, Adam Webber.
Scoring sequence: 0-7 (5 mins), 0-10 (35); 0-17 (42), 0-24 (54), 0-29 (68), 0-36 (72).
Conditions: Sunny with light breeze. RAG Pitch 3 soft.
