This was to be one of those games Civil Service could finish no worse than fourth and Welwyn playing for pride, add to that a referee that was going to be the stand out player, so there were barely over 50 minutes of active rugby and you have the tone of the game. This was a great shame as both sides wanted to play open and enterprising rugby with Welwyn playing rugby that belied their position in the league. Civil Service stuttered from whistle to whistle and both sides hardly broke sweat with the amount of standing time. Civil Service opened the scoring with a sweeping move out to the wing Wihan Grobler scoring in the corner. Welwyn pushed hard and having spent some minutes attacking Civil Service in their half broke away to score 5 -5 after 20 mins. Following a further period of probing play Civil Service scored again Hadyn Cummings dived through 5 -10. Civil Service pressed on and in another piece of open rugby Wihan Grobler swept in for his second 5 -15. Spluttering on the game swung to Welwyn as the game drew to the end of the half. Half time came and Civil Service regrouped and exerted some good attacking pressure but Welwyn responded and broke away from the back of the scrum and side stepped the defence for a try 10 -15 . Wake up call maybe, Civil Service turned up the wick and the gradual increase of pressure yielded a penalty by Matt Easton further tries for Hadyn Cummings and Heine Van der Speck with a conversion by Matt Easton to finish the game at 10 -30 Welwyn not having any further answers during this period . Whilst this was a game littered with handling errors who knows what may have happened had the referee had allowed an open and flowing game for both sides.
Paul Tiller