Last year Esher finished second to Chipstead with everything hanging on the last game of the season which despite the huge effort from Esher we never looked like loosing and didn’t!

Clearly a club as competitive as Esher would want to exact revenge at all costs. However we have improved since last year and despite missing a couple of key players are a team to reckon with whatever the opposition.

The plan was to take the game to Esher for the first 10 minutes which would have worked if we had got our hands on the ball at some stage in that period and when we did the ref penalised us off the park for various minor offences in order to protect our breakdown ball against the constantly offside Esher forwards.

However after 11 minutes we got the ball out to Dom in space and he skinned their wingers and full back – fantastic!

A few minutes later a grubber from Joe P followed up by Will who hacked on with Callum nudging it on perfectly before he was blatantly tackled without the ball – the ref had little choice but to give a penalty try. JP converted, 12-0.

Constant losses of lineouts and rucks put pressure on the forwards but the tackling was steadfast and refused to yield. Despite the possession statistics Esher never seriously threatened and Paddy produced one of his trademark runs this time from our 22 followed closely by Dom with a brilliant support run. Paddy didn’t need him but the fact he was there meant that Esher had to mark him giving Paddy that little extra space. JP converted 19-0. Half Time.

The second half was much the same, long periods of no ball. Again once we actually got the ball we looked efficient and lethal especially the centres with Joe, Ed and Will causing panic in their defence.

Paddy came off with as a precaution with a bang on the head and whiplash but this spurred the forwards onto a bigger effort with Chris driving over single handed, the referee deemed it held up! Our TMO has a picture to prove otherwise but decided to keep it to himself.

Not long after a good period of rucking for Chipstead with Joe P stealing the ball quick ball to Will and onto Joe W who was tackled and passed the ball off the floor to Chris who crashed over. 24-0.

A few minutes before the end Joe P decided to supply a bit of magic by running through their backs and skinning the full back scoring a the final try of the game.

Final score Esher 0 Chipstead 29.