SWF win ugly to go top of the table at Christmas

It was a miracle that this game went ahead as the rain was tipping it down from early Saturday morning and most people had written off the game, but it went ahead and gave SWF the opportunity to go top of the table if they could secure the win.
The sizeable support from SWF underlined how important this game was and SWF set about the task with vigour. The conditions were working against both teams as balls were dropped or knocked time after time, and especially for winger Digga who had several good situations only for the ball to squirm out of his grip. It took till the 13th minute for number 10 Brown to make a great break through the OB defence and feed the ball to Marshall for the try which Brown converted to leave Woodham up 7-0. The sides continued to labour under the worsening conditions but few chances came either way, the main one for SWF following a kick through from Price which he smartly picked up and fed to Jenkins only metres from the OB line but the covering defence got to him in time. The half time came with no further change to the scoreline.

The second half started disastrously for SWF with OB scoring two quick tries, the first coming from a charged down kick and the other from a quick break from the OB number 10. Both tries were unconverted to leave OB ahead 10-7. OB came really strong for about a further 15 minutes and it looked that they may score some more, but for some outstanding defence particularly from centre Harper who hit 2 massive tackles to signal the turnaround in the game and saw SWF begin to exert a lot of pressure on OB. With ten minutes to go SWF started running penalties at every opportunity and were thwarted at every turn by stout OB defending. From a scrum in the SWF half Bully broke away from the back of the scrum and went down the blindside, he fed the ball to Digga and from just inside the SWF half he beat off three despairing OB defenders to go over and score and outstanding game winning try. The crowd went mad and although Brown missed with the conversion a sense of relief was palpable. There was a final piece of drama when OBs were awarded a penalty in the 79th minute on the SWF 10 metre line. This was the moment when all held their breath and you could here a pin drop but the kick fell short and SWF saw out the remaining time.

A great finish to 2012 and congratulations to all the squad and coaches on seeing their hard work rewarded. Still half the season to go but all to play for. Well done
SQUAD - Gittos (captain),Gilbert,Langley,Tighe,Wilson,Pickworth,Marshall,Bull,Lockwood,Brown,Harper,Levy,Duggan,Price,Jenkins,
Sharp,Searles,Morgan (apologies to Divvy who was left out of last weeks squad list and who did not get the credit for his try).