Aldridge back to winning ways

Aldridge battled to a fine away victory over a much improved Essington side compared to last season. To be fair Aldridge led this game from the 4th minute and never looked liked losing despite a massive physical effort from the Essington powerful runners, and a very debatable try (maybe a treble movement but definitely a double as the Essington forward crawled the remaining 2 yards to the try line ;-) )

Skipper Mark Smith led from the front in a Man of the Match performance, which he matched a massive work rate with control at the set piece and in manning his troops.

Aldridge should have scored their first try on 6 minutes when Dan McKenna was put through and with a 3 man overlap outside somehow failed to either score or get the pass away. And for the first 20 minutes apart from 2 penalties from Adam Reed (and one from Essington), we somehow failed to score the first try which the players deserved. Finally, a sniping break from a ruck from Scrum Half Adam Reed broke the defensive line, and amazingly he put the pass out for his half-back partner Josh Atkin to score the first try.

Essington forwards ran hard lines throughout the game and on 35 minutes following an injury to winger Josh Hetherington, they capitalised from a rare lapse in defence to score in the corner. Half Time: Essington 8 Aldridge 13

The second half was much like the first, Essington forwards pick and go's bringing them level for a few minutes and a tale of missed opportunities from Aldridge. Dan McKenna made up for his failure in the first half and powered over for a try following great work from Adam Butler, Ben Giles and winger Lee Stokes, and a further Adam Reed penalty extended the lead. Despite a late penalty from Essington to bring them within a score, it was Aldridge who finished the stronger albeit a dropped pass stopping them from extending their lead further.

Final Score: Essington 16 Aldridge 23

Head Coach Jon Arch:

"Fair play to Essington, I thought their forwards were superb with their game built around that power and control that it gives them, its not a style of rugby I am a fan of, but its really difficult to play against especially in the current pitch conditions.

Our discipline in the contact area was much improved this week following the work we put in during at training; though we are still making silly mistakes in decision making at key times giving easy exits or failing to capitalise on the pressure - that will come right at some point. Our set piece in both scrum and line out was superb, and only a couple of mistakes cost us scoring at least 2 more tries. Ed Tonks was very good in the first half on his return to the first XV squad, and Adam Butler and Skip were simply everywhere.

There are plenty of work-ons though; we need to find a way to utilise our back line better in poor conditions, especially getting the strike runners into the game more and we still need more of the forwards being willing to show and carry the ball hard.

The win puts us back up to second in the league and sets us up for a huge game next week against Market Drayton, the current league leaders. There is no reason we cannot get everything to click on the pitch and provide a real upset; you cannot fault this bunch of lads for the effort and desire they give to the shirt."