Shelford 59 Old Albanians 17 

It was disappointing that our game last weekend was cancelled as it was felt that this would have been a good warm up for us to get Christmas out of the system and get our league season back on track but as the scoreline shows maybe an extra week’s rest was all that was required. The tone for the match was set right from the start the kick off was caught by Rory fed back to Andy who cleared down field.

The chase was good and put pressure on their winger who struggled and Chalky went over to score, the fastest try for us this season and it did not stop there. Further first half tries were scored by Richie, Clem, Callum and Will all converted and just a penalty to them giving a score of 35 – 3 at half time.

The pressure we put on Old Albanians was good and never let them settle and the interchange between forwards and backs was evident but even so we still took the foot off the gas a bit during the latter stages of the half. The first twenty minutes or so of the second half was much the same and by keeping the pressure on we could live off their mistakes and create good overlaps and keep the scoreboard ticking over with further tries from Clem, Andy, Duncan and Jim Mcgivern (running the length of the field dodging tacklers old enough to be his grandchildren and scoring in the corner – maybe!).

We still managed to switch off though allowing them to score the last two tries of the match which took the shine off the result slightly but on the whole it was a very commanding display.  We have quite a few tough matches ahead and we must continue in the same vein and try and improve each week but an extremely solid start to the second half of the season and roll on Bishops Stortford next week where we can attempt to reverse the loss we encountered just before Christmas.