The Stags left it very late to pull their chestnuts out of the fire at Duke’s Meadows on Saturday. Although they had in many ways had the better of the play and had enjoyed dominance at set scrum time in particular they found themselves trailing 15-23 with ten minutes to go. A sweeping backs’ move delivered a Paul Unseld try, however, which Scott Hadden converted and with four minutes to go the Stags trailed by just a point.

The visitors then made a mess of the kick-off presenting the Stags with a centre of the field scrum. Now the Stags’ ball retention was excellent and phase followed phase with the visitors’ line looming larger and larger. There was not to be the total glory of a final try but when a penalty under the posts was conceded Scott Hadden stepped up to knock it over and a minute later that was that.

It had been nip and tuck throughout with first time visitors Amersham & Chiltern taking first use of the not insignificant breeze. Their club chairman is Mike (Spike) Stevens who as a Kingston Poly boy played alongside the likes of Martin Wallace and Simon Tipping in Doug Stuart’s famous or perhaps that should be infamous Civil Service “A XV” in the mid-eighties. Somewhat more recently he often turned out for the Veterans and only the week before last was a member of the CS Rugby Golf team that retained the Wooden Spoon Rugby Clubs Golf Championship. This had all made for a most convivial lunch.

First blood had gone to Chiltern with two penalties but winger, Paul Unseld soon dotted a five pointer down and CS were looking by and large the more dangerous and several times came within a whisker of scoring. A couple of errant line–out throws apart, their pack also appeared to have a slight edge and given that they were looking forward to the breeze in the second half, the prospects for the home side were looking good. Another Chiltern score provided a reality check, however, and with the score now 5-12 the game was very much in the balance.

A try by Joe Clarke, converted by Scott Hadden followed by a Hadden penalty put the home side into the lead 15-12 but Chiltern came storming back somewhat against the general run of play to return the compliment with first a try under the posts and then a penalty that appeared to have given them a winning position. The Stags were not done yet though and Chiltern will be rueing their lack of control.

Stags’ coach Gareth Jordan on the other hand praised the Stags’ composure at the death : “This was a game in which we had the better of the play. We made some poor decisions in the red zone early in the game and lost one score through some quite needless crossing. I am though thoroughly proud of the way the boys played to come back from eight points down with so little time left to play. The decision making then was excellent.”

CS Rugby 1863 scorers:

Tries :

Unseld (2)
Clarke