Eastern Counties 2 - Norwich Union 10 Mistley 34

THIS was a game that Mistley had to win after last weekend’s poor showing against Swaffham.

This was due to be a challenging game with Norwich Union having already beaten league leaders Thurston and Mistley without Will King and Tobias Phillips.

There were returns for Phil Weedon and Dougall Meston to the squad.

After a brilliant start, George Mather scored under the post and a conversion by Donovan Brown, Mistley’s captain, brought the score to 7-0.

Soon after, a try from Rob Bloom, who ran through four Norwich players, and a second conversion from Brown, increased the score to 14-0.

However Norwich Union, with a much larger pack, began to fight back and reduced the deficit to 14-5 but George Mather again quickly responded to increase the score at half time to 19-5

In the second half, the larger Norwich pack tried to exert dominance over Mistley but some fine attacking moves from man-of-the-match Gary Booker and excellent scrummage work, led by Tom Rowe, enabled the backs to put the game plan into fruition with a third try from Mather who drove through three players.

A further conversion and penalty from Donovan Brown increased the score further to 29-5.

However, Norwich were not giving up and they came back with a try as Mistley failed to communicate and lost concentration.

Finally, after some 10 phases of great scrum work, Neil Bexton, dived over to score the final try for Mistley to end the score at 34-10 in their favour