A stonking Blues win that could have been even better!
Back home again after a fabulous last boot win over Witney, the Blues hosted Cheltenham RFC – the Tigers. While, as Head Coach James McAvoy suggested earlier in the week (in his interview with Kennet Radio) the Blues might reasonably predict a good win, there’s the actual game to play.
For the Blues, it all started out exactly as it was supposed to. In almost no minutes Full Back Ben Hurford-John, a Blues star, scored a try (in the farthest corner possible). Minutes later, Wing Daniel Sanders, another star, stormed in another try. The under-strength Tigers, with only 14 men on the pitch, were being battered. But, somehow, they composed themselves twenty minutes into the first half and matched the Blues, whose onslaught seemed oddly tempered and whose line-outs weren’t the best. And the teams were briefly levelled when Newbury had a man sent to the sin bin.
Half an hour in, the Blues found another excellent try from Scrum Half Beau Power, ably converted by Captain Dan Thorne, and the sides went in at the break 17:0 to the Blues.
The Tigers came out for the second half with a roar, storming over the try line and making the conversion to put 7 points on the board.
But the Blues rediscovered their confidence after another try from Ben Hurford-John, again converted, and an astonishing break by Daniel Sanders, who intercepted the ball and ran more than half the pitch, to score his second try. He was unstoppable.
Cheltenham managed another converted try midway through the second half but, after that, it was Blues dominance, with try after try, including another to make a hat trick for Daniel Sanders. The Head Coach’s predicted bonus point win was amply secured, with the final score 50:14 in the Blues’ favour.
The game saw several long-standing player milestones, including a 150th Blues appearance for George Robinson-Slater.
The Newbury Blues are away at Old Centralians next week and home again on 10th January to host Thornbury when Dan Thorne should be celebrating 300 senior team caps. Come on you Blues!
Photo by kind permission of Redwater Images
