Unfortunately T’s planned opponents for Sunday, Shelford, cried off late Thursday night, sincere apologies to anyone who turned up at Oakfield to watch. Needing another game before the start of the season proper, T’s agreed to travel long haul to Woodbridge in Suffolk.
Due to the short notice of the need to travel, Ts arrived with a bare 15 of mixed first and second team players with several debus, to find Woodbridge with a squad of 20.
T’s were straight into their patterns against lower league opposition and were 2 trys up in 10 minutes with scores form Sally Appleton and Frankie Jordan.
However, at this point T’s lost their flying winger Dannie Harris to illness and dropped to 14.
Playing 15 against 14 considerably evened the odds and Woodbridge now fought back finding space on the outside against the T’s short defence to score 3 times before the half ended at 19-10.
With a neck injury to T’s debutant Helena Day scrums became uncontested and with some re-organisation of the defence, T’s superior fitness began to tell and again gained the upper hand. After trading scores for 26-15 T’s scored 2 unanswered tries to lead 26-27.
T’s then lost another player to a dislocated shoulder but continued to play with only 13, scoring again to lead 26-32 with 12 minutes remaining.
Numerical superiority and rolling substitutions of fresh players finally wore the tiring T’s defence down and Woodbridge finally scored under the posts with 2 minutes left on the clock. The conversion won the game at 33-32.
Afterwards the coaching staff heaped praise on their team for the massive defensive effort which will stand the team in good stead for occasions later in the season when they may have to defend short of numbers.
Season proper opens October 4th away at Romford and Gidea Park 3pm KO.
First home game of the season is Aylesford October 11th 3pm KO.
