St Ives vs. Oundle
St Ives hold firm to secure the points
St Ives had their hearts in their mouths this weekend as Oundle pushed hard in the final 20 minutes to try snatching a victory from the rampant home team.
St Ives took to the field this past weekend looking to maintain their winning home form so far this season. With key back rowers Matt Ball and Tom Milner unavailable from the pack, it was a welcome return to action for Jason 'Energiser Bunny' Price and James Yeomans. A return to the fray from Adam Clark and Mickey Drake gave St Ives a squad that was more than welcome.
As is standard with these local matches, past form goes completely out of the window, and for much of the first 20 minutes neither teams looked like they were going to make the break-through. St Ives had the edge in the set pieces though, and it was from this area that they began to breakdown the Oundle defence. The opening try should have come after 20 minutes, with Marc Sands receiving a flat pass from 15 yards out - but the referee judged it to be forward. The very next play St Ives made sure of the score with Ollie Moorhouse intercepting and going through unopposed under the posts, Adam Clark was successful with the 2 point conversion.
The next try came form the dominant St Ives pack, with Pete Hammond, Gez Gilburt and Josh Dear giving the Oundle front row plenty of problems the second row pairing of Ross Thompson and Andy Grieve had free reign to push the scrum wherever they wanted and with a penalty awarded 5 metres out there was only one option to take. A solid scrum and excellent drive allowed Steve Burke to simply place the ball over the line and score St Ives' second of the day. Unfortunately Adam missed the conversion attempt.
St Ives' third try came once again from Ollie Moorhouse, with the backs enjoying some free running the gap was eventually found and Ollie streaked through to score. Adam made the conversion. Oundle now started to wake up and a series of strong drives found themselves up inside the St Ives' half. This good piece of phase play eventually led to their opening score and took the first half scoreline to St Ives 19 - Oundle 7.
The second half saw Oundle attack with much more vigour and St Ives spent most of the half under the kosh. The home team did come close to scoring on a number of occasions though and even had a try disallowed from John Paxton, an excellent burst through the centre saw him drive for the line but the referee judged the ball to be held up. It was Marc Sands who managed to keep St Ives' lead though, showing some more of his blistering pace to score out wide. Adam missed the conversion.
The rest of the game then seemed to go in Oundle's favour and they managed three more tries but thankfully for St Ives their kicker was not on target for them. The final 10 minutes were tense times for the St Ives defence - with Oundle attempting to throw absolutely everything at the wall - but the home team held firm and recorded a deserved but hard fought victory.
Speaking after the game captain Ross Thompson was ecstatic with the victory. We always knew that this would be a tough game, and despite the team not firing on all cylinders we managed to slug out the victory we needed. We can now put 2006 behind us and look forward to 2007 and many more victories!
Final Score St Ives 24 - Oundle 22