A good solid win away in the storm at Ashford

ASHFORD 1stXV 10 FOLKESTONE 1stXV 19
17th September 2016 London 3 South East Report by Alan Schofield

After last week’s careless defending, Folkestone showed they had learned a lot and gave as solid a resistive performance as they did the attacking achievement - when they topped 50 points. But points were always harder to come by on an atrocious day with heavy rain and a strong wind blowing directly down the pitch.
Mistakes and penalties dominated the whole game with a record 32 penalty kicks, twenty against Ashford, being awarded (not counting double penalties and free kicks) so it is not difficult to understand that a goodly crowd finished up being cold, wet, unrewarded and miserable.
After an early exchange of penalty kicks Ashford gained ground with long kicks down wind and from an ensuing maul, broke loose and forced a way over for the first try, duly converted. 7 – 0. But from there the interest drained away, lost in a succession of handling errors and penalties, until Seyhan Fell popped over an easy (for him) kick from out wide, but on the 22 metre line. 7 – 3, and so it remained until half time.
The forwards regained their stability after having to concede a little ground in the first half to a big pack. 55 year old Bob Porter was replaced by Tom Snare and Ben Stringer came on for ‘Jiggles’ Ellis, and with the wind behind him -James Lunnun, put in some testing kicks towards the right hand touchline that turned the opposition. Then, cleverly having drawn players towards the right put a kick, long and left, for Adam Tolman to run on to and touch down near to the posts – easy, if there is such a thing, for Seyhan Fell to add the two extra points. 7 – 10.
Another penalty from Seyhan Fell gave The Stones a six point margin (7 - 13), before being pegged back with a straight 22 metre penalty from Ashford. 10 - 13. Penalties were now being awarded at an unacceptable rate. Nine were given in the first half (five against Ashford) but they managed to add another 15 to this tally in the second half. This was coupled with a two yellow cards and a mounting cacophony of foul and loud imprecations that should have been stopped. When I was refereeing I would not tolerate this, but today’s referees seem to think it acceptable as part of the game. But it isn’t!
Nevertheless, Ashford had their attacks and threats from fast backs and strong forwards, but they found a defensive wall, as good as I have seen this season, in front of them. And without singling out any individual - have a look at the team sheet of forwards below and know that every one of them was a credit to the Club and Coach.
Seyhan Fell slotted a couple more penalties from the Ashford unruliness to put the score, on the day, beyond reach at 10 – 19.
This was creditable performance by Folkestone as a team. Yes, a lot of passes were misdirected and handling errors abounded, but the conditions were dire. It was good to see Tom Snare back in the mix, and we welcomed Johna Manu – to the cold wind and rain - a long way from his beautiful Fiji. We shall miss Chris Petley until February (maybe he will pop into Fiji for a game on his round-the world adventure?) but we have a good squad, and it is especially encouraging to see a successful Colts team coming up in support.

It was noteworthy that Steve Cribbens travelled back from sunny Spain to watch this match but he looked even grumpier in the rain than the grumpy old man in The Muppets. But let’s all hope for better next Saturday when Folkestone play Thanet Wanderers at home with a very different team to the Kent Shield match that they lost at Broadstairs in the early September – the teams now sharing the top two places in the division.
I shall now be serving a four week suspension from match reporting so instead of my weekly pleonasms regular readers will be declaimed by the old Cardiff flyer, and Chairman of Rugby, grower of runner beans and blackberry scrumper – Steve Hughes. (Hopefully I’ll be sacked afterwards.) A bientot – Alan

TEAM:- ( ! – 15) Will Melia, Steve Doughty, Rob Porter; Jake Ellis, Kieran Smith; Sam Beech, John Eustace, Jordan Godden; James Mead, James Lunnun; Josh Holt, Steve Morgan, Jon Morton (Capt.), Adam Tolman; Seyhan Fell.

Subs: Tom Snare, Ben Stringer, Johna Manu.

Scorers: Seyhan Fell 3, 2, 3, 3, 3; Adam Tolman 5.