Maldon RFC

Last weekend Maldon RFC Senior Squad travelled to Stanford Le Hope for a friendly fixture. Both teams had a good mixture of players from all their senior sides. 

From the off it was a hard hitting encounter, neither team taking a backwards step. Stanford struck first, they kept the ball for several phases and then showed good patience before crossing the line. This woke Maldon up and they responded with a try of their own. Further quick thinking from stand-in scrum half / line up jumper extraordinaire Josh Chadwick meant a perfect pass from the base of the scrum to winger Zak Knight who showed good footwork to get outside his opposition winger before passing back to Chadwick for a run in. 

Stanford responded with some more good phase play, before running their infinite loop move, which meant they got outside Maldon and scored another. Before the half was over, new Maldon centre Dan Roberts, who showed immense power and slick handling throughout the game, left three bodies in his wake when crashing over from 10 meters out. The scores were fairly even going into half time. 

After the break Maldon started off well with Perkins showing great hands to offload to Zak Knight, despite his captains cries to not throw any rubbish. Knight showed some outstanding footwork across 60m to score. Then, JP perhaps shows the best finish of the game when getting the ball just short of the line and leaping through the air to touch the ball down in the corner whilst getting tackled! 

Chadwick managed to cross the line again from short range, showing forward like strength to batter the last defender out the way to touch down. Enter, Ollie Lyons... Stanford make a good break out wide and Maldon concede penalty near thier try line. 14 Maldon shirts, back on the line ready to defend. Stanford take a quick tap as centre Ollie Lyons comes back to get onside. Despite the Maldon wall in front of him, Ollie Lyons decides it's time to stretch his hamstring as he sticks out a leg right in the path of the charging Stanford player. Yellow card, 10 mins in the bin, and a penalty try.

The 'freindly' game finished with Perkins putting hard hits on every Stanford ball carrier. One of these hits wasn't taken well by the Stanford players, who were still having nightmares of playing him earlier in the season, and a group hug broke out in the middle of the pitch. 

All ended well however, a back and forth competitive fixture which all a large group of players to get good game time!

Maldon look forward to welcoming Stanford Le Hope to Drapers Farm in a league fixture in a couple of weeks time!

MOTM - Dan Roberts