2 December 2007
Medway had hoped to blitz Maidstone with gale-force rugby on Sunday, but Mother Nature decided to have a gale of her own and wrecked the chance of any decent rugby at all. Medway won by tackling hard and taking their chances when they came.
Medway kicked off up the hill into the teeth of a 40 knot wind, with heavy rain lashing horizontally into their eyes. Luckily their shirts were soaked and stuck to their skins - any billowing of cloth and they might well have resembled a scarlet and gold fleet sailing off down the hill to Rochester. Not surprisingly the first half was played mainly in Medway territory, with Maidstone's forwards taking advantage of the conditions to put their greater weight to use in the scrums and rucks.
However, they could not convert territory into points, mainly because Medway's tackling, especially from Richard Petch, Ian Findlay and Aaron Dimmick, was aggressive and destructive. This was a game of constant stoppages as the slippery ball was dropped, and players slid around as if on ice. Even when the packs tried to keep things tight, the ball was too easily dislodged in the tackle. Scrums had to be re-set as the players failed to find purchase, and it was impossible to throw the ball in straight at the lineouts without aiming 45 degrees into the wind.
So it was a cold, wet, dark and miserable day, but there were a few beacons of light to warm the cockles of the half-drowned Medway supporters on the touchlines, in the form of three very different tries.
In the first half a scrum on halfway was won by Medway and scrum-half Ryan Ellis kicked the ball with all his might over the top of the packs. It went all of 15 metres into the wind before being blown almost straight back into the arms of the chasing centre, Stewart Stockford. Avoiding the fullback, and gritting his teeth as he laboured uphill into the gale, his considerable strength took him over the line near the posts. Recovering sufficiently from this immense effort, he then knocked over the conversion with aplomb and the teams turned round with Medway 7 - 0 up.
Medway had the better of the second half with the weather at their backs. Their second try came from excellent work by the forwards as they did what Maidstone failed to do in the first half. They got hold of a loose ball, tucked it up nice and safe, and drove 20 metres down the hill. Ian Findlay broke loose of the maul just before the goal line to go over.
The last score was remarkable in that it was the only move of the game that involved more than two passes. Medway won a scrum about 15 metres from the Maidstone line, and Ellis gently moved the ball to James Davies. The play seemed to happen in slow motion as the ball was carefully lobbed in short steps down the line through Stockford and Simon Brooks, with everyone expecting the greasy ball to fall through frozen and slippery fingers at any moment. But it didn't, and somehow despite the snail's pace of the action there was an overlap. It reached right wing Tom Bourne who never hugged his mother so tight as he did that ball as he stepped inside and carried his precious charge and two defenders over the line into the corner.
There was one last little miracle to come as Stockford lined up the conversion from way out west, belted it roughly in the direction of the corner flag and watched the wind carry it neatly through the posts. Nineteen with a bullet.
