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Basingstoke lose to bottom side Cambridge
13pts v Basingstoke 6pts Stoke played one of their worst games this season and lost their winning run in the process. Whilst Stoke had to make many positional changes due to injury and family commitments, their performance was still a long way below the high standards they'd set earlier in the season. The most notable of these changes was captain and flanker Richard Baker having to move scrum-half, with all five of Stokes scrum-halves being injured or unavailable, on the day itself. This was to cause problems, through no fault of Bakers throughout the game. Despite Basingstoke starting brightly with a series of lineouts in the Cambridge 22, it was the home team that took the lead and went on to score all the points in the first half. They started with a drop-goal from fly-half Darren Messenger. In the first half Stoke were extremely disappointing resorting to playing the type of game they were playing at the start of the season. They were second to the breakdown and attacked in ones and twos. Cambridge increased there lead 8 minutes later to 10-0 with a converted try, scored by Andy Hanrahan who ran through some flimsy defence to score and it was converted by Messenger after 20 minutes. This lead was nearly extended further when Cambridge crossed the line for the 2nd time, only to be called back for a forward pass. The first half scoring was completed on 37 minutes when Messenger converted his second penalty, to give Cambridge a 13-0 lead and a lead that they never lost. Half time Cambridge 13pts v Basingstoke 0 pts After the break, Stoke, playing with the wind started the better team and were rewarded with their first points, a penalty after 4 minutes. Stoke closed the gap to 7 points with a second penalty from Ian Calder after 15 minutes. In the minutes to follow Stoke made some changes to try and improve their game swapping Dave Jones for Matt Dangerfield and later Ash Riley for Matt Evans. Unfortunately Stoke were not able to find that cutting edge and this was to become the first game that they failed to score a try in. Despite Cambridge's scrum-half being sin-binned they were unable to score. It was nice to see Kelvin Chapman on for his 1st appearance of the season in the latter stages as a replacement. Whilst the positive points were the scrummages in the second half too many players were not willing to show the responsibility and leadership needed to create a win from a poor performance. Afterwards Stoke's Player-coach Ian Calder said: "It was a disappointing performance after the wins in recent weeks. We've got a hard week in front of us and need to sort out a few technical things. We need to put what we do on the training pitch into our performance on the pitch. We didn't create enough phases today and therefore didn't have the platform to score tries. Well played Della -Savina and Marcus Reeves for their joint man-of-the-match". Stoke team: D Jones(M Dangerfield), R Joseph, J Rees, G Jones, R Holmes, I Calder, R Baker(capt.), N Young, A Riley(M Evans), S Collins,S Drawbridge, A Wilson, P Della-Savina,M Reeves, S Appleby(K Chapman). NEXT GAME Saturday 16th March away to Cambridge, London Div 1.
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