Maidstone 10 FRFC 10

By Si Petts

The dream of going away to play with ‘a’ Substitute was shattered Saturday morning when the normal ringing round and juggling of players began, and so it came to pass that the 3’s arrived at Mote Park with fifteen happy souls.

Folkestone won the toss and elected to receive the kick. This Maidstone kick off, as with all of them during this game was caught and handled extremely well, often being received by Ben Stringer or Tony Bass and immediately fed out to a Stones player running on.

Considering this was the first game post Christmas break the rugby was fairly well joined up, if we had a main area of weakness it was losing the ball in the contact, time and time again the ball was given back to our opposition after a passage of hard work.

The break in the score line came from one of these errors, Maidstone capitalised by spreading the ball wide left via some determined running to score, against the run of play and frustrating for the Folkestone boys. The try was converted.

The score didn’t dishearten the Stones, in fact the opposite was true. Drew Woolford at nine had been controlling the pack and linking up with the backs well all game, he was penetrating the Maidstone defence at the 9-10 channel and it was no surprise that he scored the first try. It was unconverted.

Folkestone was taking charge at the scrum even though ( with no replacements ) there was some tiredness beginning to creep in, Maidstone Vets had their opposition cry off so the side line began to fill with substitute options for them ( in fairness they did offer to help us out if we broke anyone, and we thanked them for the offer). Alex Box was throwing into the line out well it just so happened we were losing our ball but winning theirs ?

Maidstone had a try held up due to some determined Folkestone defending by the pack and then the second stones try was scored by Drew Woolford, again it was unconverted. 7-10

The next score went to the home side, a high tackle on one of their players was awarded a penalty in front of the posts, which they kicked successfully 10-10.

With ten minutes to go a real buzz resonated around the side and a belief that we would win was with everyone, and it very nearly happened !! with one minute to go and via a whole team attack on the Maidstone line we were awarded a penalty 10 metres out right under the posts, as we elected to kick for the posts the ref told us he was reversing the penalty for stamping by one of the men in green ! Gutted.

C’est la Vie I can just about say now through gritted teeth but Sheet happens eh ?

The game was extremely well refereed and was played in a true Rugby spirit.

Two players I’d like to mention; Cai App Bryn who is doing brilliantly on his return to the game and Billy Monk who made his senior debut today and played extremely well at 7.