Southern Counties North

Stow 23 Thatcham 18

STOW edged an extremely close encounter between two very well matched sides.

Stow began the game on the defensive and the pressure resulted in them giving away several penalties. From one of them the Thatcham scrum half took a quick tap and danced over in the corner for a try.

Stow were struggling to string any phases together and the visitors added two penalties to take their lead to 11 points.

Towards the end of the half Stow woke up. It was the visitors' turn to concede penalties and Nick Cafearo kicked one long-range effort to make the score 3-11 at the break.

The second half could not have been more different. Stow took control up front which gave them a great platform to release the lively back line.

A great driving maul took play into the Thatcham 22 and Alex Kelly brilliantly danced his way past three tackles to score close to the posts, leaving Cafearo with the easiest of conversions.

Stow then took the lead with Cafearo’s second penalty when the visitors were penalised for not binding in the scrum.

Then James Holmes broke from inside his own half, taking play deep into Thatcham territory, and a clever cross-field chip was touched down by Mark Witney; Cafearo added the conversion.

Stow were now cruising and should have extended they lead but following another long distance break Kelly couldn’t quite hold on to the ball as he crossed the line. Stow subsequently created an overlap but the final pass was intercepted which resulted in a converted try under the posts.

However, Cafearo’s third penalty took Stow five points clear with only minutes remaining.

But from the restart Stow dropped the ball and were immediately on the rack.

Thatcham attacked with everything they had and with the last play managed to get over the line only for the solid Stow defence to hold the ball up and secure the win.