The elements win and Chinnor is off the top of the league

CHINNOR RFC played with the elements in the first half and camped themselves firmly in the Worthing half for the first 20 minutes. Chinnor’s driving mauls resulted in a penalty converted by No 9 Greg Goodfellow, then quick handling put full back Keiron Goss over for an unconverted try.

From an image by Warwickpics.com

Worthing’s first venture into Chinnor’s territory earned them a penalty converted by fly half O’Hagan. Chinnor were able to stifle further Worthing attacks near the try line preventing them from scoring. Chinnor then kicked deep into Worthing’s half and created a rolling maul from the lineout allowing Ben Manning to carve his way through the defence to score under the post. Goodfellow converted the try. Just before half time Worthing were successful in driving to the Chinnor line for James to score a try converted by O’Hagan reducing Chinnor’s lead to 10 – 15 at the interval.

Worthing now had the wind and rain in their favour and pressurised Chinnor into making mistakes and giving away two penalties converted by O’Hagan and giving them a 1 point lead. Play and possession were fairly even between the two sides though Chinnor attacks were spoiled by handling errors caused by the wet conditions.
With 20 minutes to go Worthing put in a high cross field kick bouncing tantalisingly away from the Chinnor defence in the in-goal area. Worthing full back McLean pounced on this opportunity to score a try converted by O’Hagan.

Worthing then used the wind to good effect by kicking the ball deep into Chinnor’s half and putting them on the back foot until the final whistle and giving Worthing a 23 – 15 victory.

SOURCE: Contributed by Bill O’Donnell