ASTON OLD EDWARDIANS  53 - 6  HEREFORD

Perry Common, Saturday 20 December 2003, 2:30pm

Powergen Midlands 2 West League

Hereford started off well and attacked Aston from the kick off. Aston forwards were deemed to be offside in their own 22 and Osborne put Hereford into a 3-0 lead. Hereford continued to press throughout the first half and were unlucky not to score on several occasions but following a series of decisions from the referee that went the home side's way, Aston were able to strike back to even the scores on the half hour with a penalty from centre Bennet.

Back came Hereford, with Ben Jenkins and Matthew Pritchard at the forefront and pressing the Aston line and they were awarded a penalty for Aston consistently collapsing the maul. Osborne made it 6-3 after 32 minutes.

Hereford pressed from the kick off but with more referee's decisions going the home side's way, Aston stole the ball and broke from their own 22 to set up flanker Jones to run over for a try.

From the kick off some poor tackling allowed number 8, Lowe, to run straight through the middle of the forwards and run in his first of three tries, again from his own half. There then followed a discussion with the referee, which resulted in Gary Preece being yellow, carded with the score at 6-15 after 38 minutes.

In the remaining minutes of the first half winger, Eager, ran in a further try converted by Bennet to give Aston a lead of 6-22 after 40 minutes, when with 5 minutes before the whistle Hereford had been in a deserved 6-3 lead.

The second half started with 3 further Aston tries in the first eight minutes, from Bennet, Eager and Lowe. With 2 conversions the score was 6-41 and the game had been decided. Hereford didn’t give up but the referee took a hand in the game again when he showed the yellow card to both scrumhalves after they had tripped over each other. For the next 20 minutes Hereford had the better of the exchanges but once again could not get over the oppositions line. With just 10 minutes to go the referee again decided to penalise Hereford and again brought out a yellow card for Jeremy Grisman. After pressing the Aston line the ball was turned over and some good ball handling put winger, Green, in the corner.

In the final minute Aston completed the scoring with another try from Eager and a corner conversion from Bennet. Final Score 6-53.

Aston were without doubt the better side and were certainly 20 points better than Hereford but neither side needed the intervention of the referee, who had an influence in the number of points scored.