Ipswich 7 - 20 Chelmsford

Saturday 12th April 2008

This was a must win game if Ipswich wanted to guarantee playing in London 3 North East league next season. Sadly after a promising start, that was not to be and the game was taken away from them by a much more posititive approach by the visitors. who ran out easy winners..

The weather and pitch were perfect at the kick-off and Ipswich playing against the wind applied the early pressure, showing strength in the scrummage winning the early exchanges.
After 9 minutes Mark Broughton received the ball in the Ipswich 22 side stepping two defenders making a break up the centre of the pitch before offloading to Shaun Elbrow to race down the wing, Elbrow set the ball up just short of the tryline and the ball passed inside for Tertius Terblanche to score left of the uprights. Terblanche converted his own try (7 – 0).

On 30 minutes, Chelmsford managed to reduce the deficit when Ipswich were caught handling in the ruck in front of the posts (7 – 3).
The rest of the half continued in the same vain, with Ipswich just failing to add any further scores.
On the stroke of half time the Chelmsford backs started to run at the Ipswich defence, managing to break the gain line after some weak tackling. The Chelmsford winger managed to score in the far right corner, this went unconverted (7 – 8).

5 minutes into stoppage time the Chelmsford backs tried the same move and again feeble uncommitted tackling allowed an easy try for the winger. Again this went unconverted (7 – 13) Halftime.

At the turn round Ipswich now had the wind on their backs to try and rescue the situation. The weather had changed dramatically with a torrential down pour.

Ipswich receiving the ball decided to run the ball from their own half rather than use the elements to gain ground, this poor decision making was their downfall, being caught in possession. Chelmsford mauled the ball down the right wing and drove over for the try. Despite the conditions the Chelmsford kicker converted for the extra two points (7 – 20).

Final score Ipswich 7 Chelmsford 20

The pressure of this fixture obviously affected some of the Ipswich players, who sadly went into their shells rather than relish the challenge. Ipswich really do have it all to do next week, playing away to Norwich.
Nothing more than a win will do to avoid relegation, hoping that near neighbours Diss beat Chelmsford at Chelmsford.

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FIRST XV LEAGUE
London 3 North East

Pos	Team	Pld	Pts
1	Westcliff	22	41
2	Diss	22	36
3	Rochford	22	30
4	Harlow	22	22
5	Romford	22	22
6	Brentwood	22	21
7	Saffron W	22	21
8	Norwich	22	19
9	Braintree	22	18
10	Chelmsford	22	14
11	Ipswich	22	13
12	Colchester	22	5

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