Match Reports - Verulamians 17 Vs 23 Bank of England, Under 15's Welwyn and Verulamians 15 vs 12 Datchworth

Verulamians 17 vs 23 Bank of England

We welcomed Bank of England to the mighty Cotlandswick for our first home clash of the season! With the crowd growing on the mound ready to watch the match in anticipation we kicked off!

Both teams enjoyed good patches of play in the opening minutes with the Vee’s capitalising on some penalties to march their way towards Bank’s try line. However, once Bank managed to regain possession of the ball and start to implement their strategy of exploiting the new 50-22 rule and putting our back three under pressure with high balls. They managed to sneak in the corner after a big high ball from their crafty fly half led to an unforced error allowing their winger to scamper away.

With this first score under their belts Bank of England looked to assert dominance with the slope of the pitch in their favour for the first half. After some more well placed kicks from the fly half Bank of England managed to score two more unconverted tries which really put the Vee’s up against it.

Despite this, in true Vee’s spirit the boys in blue and yellow fought back and after some great broken play and a break by right wing Jake Lawrence. Our sneaky scrum half Joe Breeze managed to dot down in what looked to be the start of a great comeback.

Soon the second half ensued and the Vee’s looked to continue their new found momentum with the Bank of England forward pack tiring. After some added pressure in Bank’s half, the Vee’s managed to execute a well run trick line out leading to number eight Josh Lawrence flying down the touch line before offloading to prop Harry Mack to score in the corner.

15-10 the scores stood in Bank’s favour with the Vee’s firmly in the driving seat. The crowd were entertained with some great running rugby and tough defence by both teams and with the game in the balance, Josh Lawrence made another line break in what led to him beating the full back and scoring under the posts making the crowd go wild!

This led to a spirited response from Bank of England who managed to regain control of the match and work their way up the field where after a lengthy period of sustained pressure managed to score in the right hand corner. Three points in it with minutes to go and Bank once again managed to find themselves in our half showing no remorse. Their fly half received a pass from the scrum half and calmly slotted a drop goal which led to the final score being 23-17 in Bank’s favour.

A special mention to our man of the match; Connor Moore who enjoyed his first game at Fly Half for the Vee’s and after going off for injury came back on as a flanker in the true Vee’s spirit!

What.A.Game….Well done to all the players that made their home debuts for the Vees - the Rebuild is On, and the future is bright…..

Under 15’s - Welwyn and Vees 15 vs 12 Datchworth

Another fiercely contested game saw the combined Welwyn and Verulamians side play Datchworth at our other home Welwyn Rugby Club. The build up to the game was fantastic with both sides really wanting to win over the other in something of a local derby for our Welwyn half.

A feature of the first half was the solid scrum which allowed attacking opportunities, and great defensive work from the WVs meant that from a Datchworth turnover, the WVs scrambled back across the field to stop what seemed a very dangerous attack and near certain try. Our first try followed shortly after with a great scrum laying the platform for quick hands across the back for to set Rhys up down the sideline for a great try.

Just before half time, Alfie sent a penalty through the posts with great kicking technique, making sure of the points.

The spectators were buzzing at half time with the fantastic performance, but Datchworth came out in the second half and really took the game to the WVs and scored with a couple of tries, and going into the lead. The second half was a really hard fought game with a feature of the half being a strong defensive tackling gang of Joe, Rhys, Alfie and DJ to bring down Datchworth’s outstanding number 8 several times stopping Datchworth going into a further lead.

With the game heading into the final moments, there was a great initial run from DJ, with great distribution by Tom who considered a darting run but passed the ball off to Dylan who crashed through two tackles to dive over the line and score the try which was duly converted by Alfie for the WVs to take the lead! At the restart the WVs managed to toe poke the ball out of play to finish the game with a big roar and celebration from WVs players and spectators. Coaches man of the match was Adam who had taken down all the high kicks Datchworth sent over, cooly and calmly leading to the WVs being able to switch on the attack, the captains award went to Dylan for his perserverance and fantastic winning try, and the award for putting what we trained into the match was Nick.