Thurrock completed their championship season with a hard earned win over visitors Norwich whose defeat deemed them to relegation. The visitors kept Thurrock at bay for over 30 minutes, the home side huff and puffed but could not deliver the final product, until at last Thurrock put together more than two phases together and created an overlap and wing forward James Flavin crashed over, Aaron Burns added the conversion. Quickly after a fantastic break from Stefan North some 35 metres out see him steam over in the corner, Burns added the conversion from the touchline. Some indiscipline from Thurrock had them pinned into the corner and from the result line out a well worked move created space for them to score a converted try to reduce the deficit to 14-7 at half time.
Ben Madden was on hand early in the second half to weave over and score another well worked try, Burns missed the conversion but soon after added a penalty to extend the Thurrock lead. Ben Madden was replaced by Earl Gorman and his first touch of the ball was a feed from Ben Stanley and Gorman had the simple task of touching the ball down.
Norwich showed plenty of spirit and kept going and gave themselves hope when adding a further converted try with just under a quarter of the match left. Any chance of a possible upset, were quickly diminished when it was Gorman again breaking the defence with his strong running style to score in the corner. The win capped a fine league season, losing only once, and amassing over 860 points, whilst also winning the league, the first since 91-92 season, when the league season consisted of only 11 games.
Team Darryl Worster, Sam Porter, Ben Madden, Ben Stanley, Nathan Farrell, Ian Rudgely, Aaron Burns, Stefan North, Dan Carey, Billy Smith, Aaron Woodward, Dritan Loka, Rob Batho, James Flavin, Luke Crowhurst. Rep: Ben Partridge, Andy Kettleton, Earl Gorman
This Week Thurrock make the short journey to Canvey for the 1/4 final of the Essex Intermediate Cup kick off is 3.00pm
