Thurrock win in the Wilderness

Thurrock travelled to the New Wilderness expecting non other than a hard game and came away winning by the narrowest of margins in a game that could have gone either way to the very end. The one week break seemed to affect the visitors as they started the match sluggishly and Thurrock fell behind in the opening quarter when conceding a try from a 5m line-out and captain Goodchild went over, Reed added the conversion. Thurrock did come back well and looked much the better side, only penalties stopping any attacking momentum, but Jake Barrand did add a penalty to reduce the deficit before Manor through Reed, restored the 7 point advantage. Thurrock continued to press and deservedly scored a try, when Lee Herrington went over under the posts from a well worked forward move, and Barrand levelled the scores with the conversion. The home side came straight back and put Thurrock under pressure, and they needed a major defensive effort, but minutes before the break Nick Cooper-Hicks was yellow carded for coming in from the side and collapsing the maul. From the resultant penalty Reed knocked it over to restore their lead to 13-10 as the half time whistle went.

It was a different Thurrock side that turned up for the opening 10 minutes of the second half as they stormed into the lead with tries from Ben Madden and a 50 metres return from Nathan Farrell both converted by Jake Barrand for Thurrock to lead by 11 points. But anyone thinking it was the start of a comfortable away victory would be disappointed. The home side's forwards took charge of the game and within 15 minutes regained the lead by scoring two tries, one of which was converted and a penalty to make the score 28-24. Thurrock who have a never-say-die attitude then pulled the game out of the fire near the end when a mix of forwards and backs linked well for Barrand to go over for what turned out to be the winning try. But Thurrock still had to endure a very nervous closing few minutes which included a chance of a match winning drop goal which luckily was spilled by the awaiting player. The ball was gratefully turned over and was kicked out of play for a bonus point win.