London One North Colchester 60 Letchworth Garden City 12 Colchester put in a much better performance this Saturday and notched up nine tries in an excellent display of running rugby.
This result puts Colchester back up to fourth in the league and brought the smiles back to coaches, players and spectators alike.
The key to the victory was the solid display by the forwards and the talent in the backs.
The visitors kicked off and before long Ollie Pickett had gone over for an early try.
Letchworth came back at the restart but their burly inside centre was well contained by Flexman. Indeed from one such turnover Pickett fed wing James Crozier who scored and converted an excellent try.
Later a swift blindside move by scrum half Matt Wadling saw him score in the corner. Colchester were now 19 points ahead and so the score remained until half-time.
Fly half Brett Cutbush made good use of the favourable wind in the second half and before long the Blacks won a penalty that Crozier converted, taking the lead to 22 points.
The visitors raised their game and soon sprightly scrum half Chris Gibbs claimed an unconverted try. This setback seemed to stir Colchester and in the following 20 minutes they score three tries in quick succession with hooker Hartley claiming two and Liversidge one.
Unfortunately at a Letchworth lineout the Blacks gave away a penalty for having too many men in the line and were punished for this mistake when Letchworth scored shortly afterwards.
However this did not herald a revival by the visitors. Instead, on his return to the pitch, winger Meads sped down the pitch and scored an excellent try under the posts.
Not long after Cutbush broke through the opposition defence, ran 50 metres and offloaded to dynamo prop Joe McMillan who, amazingly, was on his shoulder and well placed to score in the corner.
At 53-12 Colchester’s lead looked unassailable yet they weren’t finished yet. In the dying moments of the game the ball was again moved to Crozier who ran 50 metres to score his second try which he then converted bringing the final score to 60-12.
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