Chiswick lose close encounter

Rugby Result - Finchley 12     Chiswick  7

Wind and a slippery pitch meant a lot of kicks, and handling errors. Finchley kicked better and with Chiswick again having no recognised hooker, and Finchley dominant in the lineouts, the visitors had to make the most of any reasonable ball they got. Unfortunately they never quite developed the sort of fluency in attack which generally serves them well, despite heroic efforts by Ben Hinze and Mark Jones in mid-field. Furthermore, their failure quickly to bring down the Finchley right wing whenever he had the ball was exploited well by the home team.

From the off Chiswick were under pressure, but ironically it was their first real attack, after fifteen minutes, that was their downfall, Hinze running into a couple of hard tackles in midfield after a great lineout take by Mark Williams. The turnover ball was fed quickly to the Finchley wing, who made the attempted tackles look worse than they were as he pranced down the line to score wide out. The conversion was good.

The game became end-to-end, with promising movements spoilt by knock-ons, and some excellent last ditch defence by both teams. Marco Chraplewczyk, Graham Robbings and Matt Vinden all made some good runs, but there was no further score before half-time.

Right after the restart Finchley kicked for the corner, and the slippery ball was knocked on. Finchley gained a lineout and produced a good rolling maul from which their blind-side flanker scored a try. The conversion attempt came back from the post. With a couple of subs on, Chiswick began to return the pressure, but their play was untidy, and few chances were produced. Keith Luckman missed a penalty kick he would normally have got – the smooth machine was hiccupping.

With time running out, a long kick up by wing Simon Slattery gained good ground, and with Vinden making a good lineout take, a long pass by Luckman gave Hinze just enough room to charge through he middle of the home line to score under the posts. This one Luckman got. Too late – Slattery’s next forceful run, nearly successful, being the final act of the drama. 

Chiswick team :-  Johnson, Campbell, Donaldson, Chraplewczyk, Williams, Maguire, Robbings (Pritchard ), Vinden, Blackman ( Frost ), Luckman, Slattery, Hinze, Jones, Zakrevsky ( Lewis ), Hammond

October 10, 2005