Bullish Bracknell condemn Maidenhead to their sixth defeat of the season

Maidenhead 17, Bracknell 47

Local rivals Bracknell condemned Maidenhead to their sixth defeat of the Regional 1 South Central season at Braywick Park on Saturday afternoon.

In wet and windy conditions, Bracknell ran in seven tries to strengthen their place in fifth while David Mobbs-Smith’s men fell to the bottom of the table having amassed their lowest points total in a league match so far.

Kicked off under dark and ominous clouds, Bracknell drew first blood in this contest with Oli Radford scoring a penalty in the fourth minute.

It took until the 18th minute for spectators to witness a try as Ben Bathurst was offloaded the ball at just the right time to go over on the left side for the visitors, the extras good.

With their tails up, Bracknell touched down another five points soon after with their number 17 diving through a mass of bodies – Radford this time was wide with his conversion.

A sublime kick from range in the 27th minute took the score to 0-18 before Maidenhead hit back with a penalty of their own on the half-hour mark.

As the opening 40 minutes drew to a close, Bracknell had enough energy to score another try as their number 15 jinked his way over the line, the score at the break 3-25.

Buoyed by a half-time team talk, Maids started the second half strong, keeping the ball in their opponents’ half and tackling strong.

And their pressure bore fruitful as they touched down five points and kicked away two in the 46th minute to make the score 10-25.

However, using their bigger players, Bracknell were able to push the ball over for another try less than 10 minutes later and counter-attack Maids in the 63rd minute with torrential rain now lashing down.

A simple catch and drive saw Bracknell’s number 13 go over under the posts and the subsequent conversion was made.

A rolling maul added another five points onto the scoreboard in the visitors’ favour before Maids’ had the last say in this clash, scoring a try at the death with Greg Smith competently kicking away the extras.

At full-time, head coach Mobbs-Smith said: “I think we leaked too many points in the first half, so we were on the back foot for the rest of the game. Obviously, we were playing against the conditions today too.

“We were hoping to go into the break 3-18 but they got that last try before half-time. In the second half, we probably should have scored more when we had the dominance, but they played well.

“They are physically bigger than us and that helped them in the rain. We are not able to run with the ball as well as them and we took far more contact in the game. They bullied us today.”

Next up for Maidenhead is a trip to Marlborough (Saturday, November 4).