Mill Hill v Hendon II (by Matt Thomas)

Mill Hill 7 – Hendon II 15

19th April 2008 - Away

Saturday saw Mill Hill take on local rivals Hendon, in a tightly fought game of rugby. The prize was a place in next weeks cup final.

Having one of the best II’s teams this season, there was a strong belief in the camp that Mill could repeat the heroics that stopped Hendon in their tracks with a 10 – 5 victory back in January.

Hendon started the better team and played some very good rugby in the opening 20 minutes. Only great defending from Mill prevented Hendon scoring early on, but the defence eventually gave in halfway through the first half. Hendon’s passing out of the tackle created an overlap on the outside and their winger scored in the corner.

Some fortunate refereeing decisions and some great last ditch tackles meant Mill went in at half time only 5-0 down. A bold decision from the captain to change things around at half time paid dividends with 15 minutes from time. Two huge dump tackles from Jon Bird and Bob Brown sent Ross Mitchell through into space, brushing off several tackles in the process!

The ball was kicked over, some hard running from Rich Buss and co meant Mill were first on the scene. Great forward work at the break down from Darren Baxter presented nice clean ball for Jon Bird to score under the posts. Conversion added. Mill Hill 7 – Hendon 5.

With only 10 minutes remaining the final was in sight, but when Mill gave away a penalty from the resulting restart, we were brought back to reality. Penalty scrapped over with a little help from the cross bar.

This seemed to take the wind out of Hill and we never really recovered from that. With the last play of the game Hendon scored the second and what proved to be the winning try.

The effort from the boys on Saturday was absolutely huge. It would be wrong to pick out a man of the match as everybody put their bodies on the line. Maybe on another day we would have been celebrating a fantastic win, but it was not to be.

Bring on next season!

Team: Moore, L.Bird, Hamilton, Mitchell, Flanagan, Wilkinson, Baxter, Vedjani, Crofts, Buss, Stack, Arnold, Farge-Bennett. Wishart, Thomas (Captain)

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