Rugby – Chippenham 6 – Chinnor 20

ALTHOUGH the result indicated a comfortable win for Chinor, this was never the case.
They had to defend for long periods in the second half
against a team that refused to give-up. Heavy rain both during the warm-up and the game itself made for a slippery surface and a greasy ball which made
handling quite difficult. Playing into the wind, Chinnor were first on the score-sheet after 20 minutes when a well executed blind side move put Eric
Brown away. He still had much to do, but with a hand-off and an arching run, he made it into corner.He scored his second in similar circumstances some
minutes later only on this occasion he took the ball some 30 metres out but, with a powerful run, managed to reach the line.
Chippenham struck back with two penalties from fly-half James Gibson to give an interval score of
10pts to 6 in Chinnor’s favour.

Chinnor had the wind at their backs in the second half and increased their lead within a minute of the restart. A long kick down-field by fly-half Richard Williams reached Chippenham’s left-wing Champion who
threw a pass inside to no-one in particular which allowed Williams to gather the ball and score the simplest of tries. The conversion and a penalty from
Williams completed the scoring. Chippenham did come back strongly with their forwards keeping possession by picking up and driving forward but when they
spun it wide they did not pose that much danger. Chinnor could have, and should have used the wind to their advantage by kicking for territory. However it was an indication of their confidence that they tried to keep the ball in hand.

For Chinnor Eric Brown once again showed what an excellent finisher he is. He is now top try scorer in the league. Darren Oxley had another influential game in the centre with the team well lead by Paul Hennessy.