Eastern Counties One Ipswich YM 39 Colchester III 8 An injury-hit YM cemented their table-top position with a hard-fought victory over a surprisingly strong Colchester side.

Kicking off on a dull, breezy afternoon, the YM soon found themselves on the defensive, as Colchester advanced upfield with some well-organised and robust play, and secured their first three points from a penalty, before the YM had themselves had more than two or three touches of the ball.

Things looked grim for the host side. But the YM’s resilience is a major strength, and added to that this season is an increasing knowledge as to how to attack, and they struck back at once, seizing possession from their own restart, driving the visitors’ pack back in the scrum to secure good, fast ball and setting up a three-quarter move which saw Carlton Ford score the first of his hat-trick of tries.

From then on the initiative and advantage lay with the home side and their quicker style of play, their fierce tackling and higher level of fitness gradually closed out the game.

A second try and a penalty, both from Barney Horsfield, followed with Colchester scoring a breakaway try at the end of the first half, giving the YM a 15-8 lead at the turnaround.

For a while in the second half exchanges were even, Colchester’s greater skill at defensive rucking cancelling out YM’s attacking ability and there was no further scoring for some time.

But as the game moved to a close, Ford finished off another slick move to score under the posts and the YM scored their bonus point try a few minutes later.

Ash Lacey topped a good afternoon’s performance before further tries were added by the young Kasselle Lee and finally by Ford, again, running 90 metres out of defence, to give the score-line the margin that the YM’s dogged performance merited.