St Ives 1XV vs Bedford Swifts
Saturday 4th of November saw St Ives travel to Bedford to face the in form top of the table team Bedford Swifts. The opening 5 minutes saw St Ives taking the game to Bedford, forcing errors from the kick off and surging forward in numbers. A good rucking performance provided clean ball for the backs, who ran good lines creating an overlap out on the left wing. Unfortunately the Bedford winger anticipated the pass well and intercepted the final ball, leaving himself a clear run in under the posts. After this rapid riposte to the good start, St Ives came back in a shell shocked state, they allowed Swifts far too much time and possession which allowed them to score out wide a couple of times in the first half.
The second half started brighter for St Ives who began to harass the Bedford defence once again. It took 20 further minutes though until the breakthrough came. Some strong running from the forwards and good interlinking play in the midfield made sure that Marc Sands had a glimmer of a chance on the outside. He took this opportunity well and crashed over in the corner to register St Ives' first points on the board. Unfortunately Jack Blackley was unsuccessful with the conversion. Despite this being St Ives' first points, they had been unable to prevent Bedford scoring up to this point, a well drilled backline regularly created the overlap on the outside. So by this point the game had already been lost.
The final 20 minutes did provide some element of satisfaction for the St Ives team, they enjoyed the majority of possession and dominated the Bedford Swifts pack and pressured the 3 quarters for the remainder of the game. Unfortunately it was too little too late. St Ives First Team Captain Ross Thompson spoke after the game about his concerns. "We showed in the last 20 minutes what we should have done all game. Bedford to their credit are a very well drilled outfit and they are very streetwise, but they are by no means unbeatable. Too long have they been a bogey team of ours and we need to shake of the idea that they are vastly superior to us. We went into the game expecting a loss and it is not the way to play rugby! We need to snap out of things quickly, with an away game at Stoneygate next weekend, we need to put this loss behind us and move on."
Final Score Bedford Swifts 41 - St Ives 5