Fatialofa’s flair foils ill disciplined Canterbury

CHINNOR RFC, based in Thame, have chalk up their first victory of the season in style with a 15-11 win over Canterbury on Saturday, October 24.

Junior Fatialofa

Chinnor kicked off with the slope in their favour reputed to be worth at least a 10 point advantage to the team playing with it. This proved to be the case as Chinnor piled on early pressure to earn a penalty, converted by Will Millett. Chinnor counter attacked through a Jones/Millet interchange to take play back into Canterbury’s half allowing Junior Fatialofa to carve through the opposition only to be tackled short of the line.

A technical foul resulted in a yellow card for Canterbury’s flanker. Chinnor capitalised on this weakness with the back row of Vandermolen, Tyas and Wright combining well with hooker, Townsend, to provide the forwards with a driving maul to the line. Birthday boy, Daz Oliver, drove over for Chinnor’s first try converted by Millet to give the visitors a 10 point lead.

From the restart Chinnor gave away a penalty converted by fly half Kingsman. This gave Canterbury renewed vigour to attack but the Chinnor’s defence stood solid with relief from several driving runs by Vandermolen and Tyas.

In the second half Canterbury used the slope to their advantage to gain position and then to convert another penalty to close the gap to a 6 -10. Ben Manning and Danny Wright’s workrate took play back up the slope into Canterbury’s 22m area where their ill-discipline resulted in two of their players being yellow carded in quick succession. Again Chinnor capitalised on this advantage with a scintillating solo try from Junior Fatialofa weaving his way through the defence to score an unconverted try, living up to Canterbury’s programme prediction as being the ‘player to watch’.

In the last 20 minutes Canterbury were back to 15 players and used the slope well. They kicked deep into the corner and drove over from the resulting maul allowing Green to score an unconverted try and reduce their deficit to 11-15. But, in the last 10 minutes, Chinnor were on the back foot yet defended their line superbly well to win their first game of the season. Canterbury will be rue their three yellow cards which lead to Chinnor scoring both of their tries.