L&Y hit top form

Cheshunt 5, Lowestoft & Yarmouth 38

LOWESTOFT& Yarmouth's seven-hour round trip to face the leaders of Herts/Middlesex One for their EDF Junior Vase fifth round tie resulted in a hugely impressive performance and arguably their best win of the season.

L&Y showed a huge improvement and were back to their belligerent best in horrible conditions. Cheshunt were demolished up front, hassled and harried all over the park - and despite some excellent defence in the first half, they crumbled in the second period.

Shaun Woodhouse joined Wayne Nixon and Danny Simmons to make up a fearsome front row and provide the platform for Marc Thomas to score his second hat-trick of the season from No 8, and guide young flanker Zak Baxter to a man-of-the-match performance.

Russ Wilkinson and Simon Coleman ruled the line-out and Chris Howe, playing on the flank rather than his usual hooking spot, was freed up to have a much more influential input.

All this meant the ball was served on a plate for Russ Chapman and Matt Jary to direct affairs, and although freezing wet conditions did not exactly make for a free-flowing game, the back line barely made a handling mistake all game.

The Cheshunt defence held firm for the first 30 minutes before Thomas scored the only try of the first period after charging over from a five-metre scrum for Chapman to convert.

The big No 8 added another identical try early in the second half, quickly followed by winger Tristan Taylor-Crisp scooting over wide on the right after good approach work by Scott Nelson and Miles McAlone.

Jary kept Cheshunt pinned back with a series of accurate kicks and from a line-out melée Chris Howe added a third try after charging down a clearance and following through to touch down.

The home side snatched a try back from a quickly-taken tapped penalty which had led to the controversial sin-binning of Wayne Nixon.

But any hopes of a comeback were quickly dispelled. Despite spending the scrums locked in the front row, Woodhouse continued to make some trademark stampedes through the opposition defence and he was rewarded by being driven over from a maul to the right of the posts.

Thomas rounded off the game, and his hat-trick, with a final try under the posts after shrugging off some tired tackles and trotting free. Chapman added three conversions to his one from the first half.

Plaudits go to the much-improved back three of Josh Fewkes, Daniel Boardley and Taylor-Crisp, who all had fine games and inspired great confidence from their team-mates.

New signing Tommy Simmons made his debut from the bench, and with other replacements Lewis Davey and Tim Fenn, they all added to a very pleasing squad performance.

This weekend L&Y face old rivals Woodbridge at home 2.15 pm ko in their last league game before the Christmas break, with a VP luncheon beforehand at Gunton Park. Can they remain unbeaten in all competitions?