Bedford Queens 55 St Ives 5
St Ives continued their 2007/2008 season with a shocking loss to league rivals Bedford Queens.
Historically, St Ives have not faired too badly against the Bedford side. Although they lost to them twice last season, the games were close, hard fought affairs with defeat only by a few points. So Saints were expecting a good match.
Winning the toss and electing to receive the kick off, St Ives started brightly. Both sides were playing scrappy rugby, with neither outfit seeming to gel. However, this style seemed to suit Saints, who managed to string some half decent phases together. They then fed the ball through the hands well, finishing with a clever chip over the Bedford defensive line. Scrum half Dan Stewart streaked through to collect a lucky bounce and sprinted over Bedford’s try line to open the scoring in under 5 minutes. Jack Blackley was unsuccessful with the conversion.
This score seemed to wake up Bedford, who proceeded to mount several sustained attacks on Saints line. For the most part, St Ives defence held up well, but the well drilled Bedford pack eventually ground Saints defence down with a series of rolling mauls and burrowed their way over the line to score.
Just before the break, Saints let another try through their defence. This was shaping up to be a hard fought contest, with the half time score 12-5 to Bedford.
After the break however, St Ives decided to stop playing as a team, indeed to stop playing rugby altogether. Despite a gutsy performance at set pieces from Saints – scrums and lineouts working well - they simply couldn’t piece together any meaningful passages of play. Neither could Bedford, but they didn’t really have to, with the St Ives defence deciding to no longer play a part in the game and giving away silly penalties for a past time. The flood gates opened, and Bedford capitalised on Saints infringements, seemingly unstoppable, running in a series of tries to take the game 55-5.
Speaking after the match, Saints captain Pete Hammond said “I can’t believe what happened today. In the first half, which was admittedly scrappy by both sides, we hung in and let two tries in – but we made them work for them. But after the break, I have no idea what happened. It was as if we no longer fancied playing as a team. We weren’t a team, we were 15 individuals all ball chasing. And our tackling was appalling, I have never seen so many people fall off tackles. Bedford were a well drilled side, but it wasn’t as if they were trying things we haven’t seen before. They ran good, but simple lines and we just didn’t seem to be able to stop them.
I think our run of bad results is linked directly to two things – a lack of players at training being the first, but more significantly we have not fielded the same team two weeks running due to injuries and people being away. Indeed, today’s side had never played before, and I think this is what is hampering us most at this time. Next week’s match is crucial, a home match against league newcomers Rushden & Higham. We need to win this one to turn our season around”.