By John Troup
CHELMSFORD 12
BRAINTREE 10
London League division three Essex
BRAINTREE Rugby Club suffered derby heartache as they narrowly lost a blood and thunder encounter with their great rivals from down the A12.
After losing the toss and being made to play with a significant slope to their advantage in the first half Braintree struggled to get their hands on the ball for the first ten minutes.
But once they’d conquered their early jitters the Black and Ambers started to dominate the play, and spent most of the first half camped in the opposing 22.
However, they kept ceding possession at crucial moments and were unable to capitalise on their territorial advantage as much as they would have liked.
The first and only score of the opening half came on 28 minutes when the ball was illegally kicked out of the scrum by a Chelmsford boot, earning Braintree a penalty in front of the posts.
Scrum-half Keelan Joslin slotted the chance to give his side a 3-0 lead, but though Braintree continued to dominate for the remainder of the half they were unable to add to their tally.
After the interval Chelmsford, now playing with the gradient to their advantage, piled on the pressure and looked capable of scoring from every attack.
But they went further behind eight minutes in when a big tackle by full-back Dominic Dann saw the ball fly loose.
Winger Tom Drew gathered it into his arms before running three quarters of the length of the pitch to score, leaving a trail of defenders in his wake.
Dann then rounded off the move he had started by stepping up to pot the conversion and give his side a 10-0 lead.
Predictably Chelmsford were fired up by the score and quickly built another period of sustained pressure which culminated in an unconverted 56th minute try.
Despite playing up the slope, Braintree did manage to force play into Chelmsford's 22 for long periods, but couldn’t find the killer pass at the right moment to force home their advantage.
And their profligacy hit them hard when they conceded a converted try out wide deep into injury-time which gave the home side a two-point lead with only minutes remaining.
Even then, Braintree managed to force a late penalty which could have seen them snatch victory from the jaws of defeat but were forced to watch it drift agonisingly wide from distance.
Braintree: Dann, Drew, Rollit-Mason, J Young, Whyatt, Adams, Keelan Joslin, D Coote, Hardin, Prince, Mlambo, Fouche, Pickles, J Stanhope, Moss. Reps: W Turner, Thompson, Page.
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