Basingstoke throw it away 22-25 to Weston

FX-backed Basingstoke lost their unbeaten home record on Saturday with a disappointing defeat to Weston-Super-Mare. Stoke dominated large phases of the game and had the usually reliable Ian Calder had his kicking boots on would have won the game. In the end Stokes inability to secure ball at the breakdown and indiscipline cost them heavily as Stoke gifted Weston possesion and territory. Stoke applied the early pressure but were reduced to a single penalty attempt which Calder missed badly. Weston countered and took the lead as they took advantage of Stoke mistakes and indiscipline. Several penalties in the Stoke 22 eventually led to a push-over try well converted by James Reid. Stoke replied immediately as good pressure from the kick-off forced a scrum on the Weston 5-metre line and for the first time in the game they put 4 or 5 phases of play together eventually creating a hole for Simon Wickes to crash over. Calder converted to make the score 7-7 after 15mins. Weston opened up a small lead in the following phases of play as a penalty from Reid who also added the conversion to a 50 metre solo effort from Matt Britton built a 17-7 lead. At this stage of the game Weston were on top as Stoke who missed captain Kelvin Chapman's usual lineout dominance struggled to secure any good set-piece possession for their backs who looked dangerous when they spread the ball wide. It was Stoke who scored next though as a backs move went badly wrong until Calder gathered possesion in his own 22 and beat several tackles before off loading to the ever-present stand-in captain Jim Dixon who put Robbie Holmes in for a try 15metres in. Calder who had earlier missed with a penalty from in front of the posts again missed a relitavely easy conversion to leave the half-time score at 17-12 in Westons favour. Stoke started the second-half in lively fashion and after only two minutes Simon Buckland broke through the Weston defence from 10 metres out to score under the posts. Calder added the extras to take a 19-17 lead. Weston now began to turn the screw as they kept the ball in their forwards who after 15 second-half minutes and several pick and drives scored an unconverted try wide out to retake the lead. Calder eventually recorded his first successful penalty to pull the scores level before silly backchat from Stoke gave Weston a simple penalty attempt to take a 25-22 lead with only 8 minutes to go. The final minutes saw Stoke trying to break through a robust Weston defence, but their inability to win solid scrum ball gave the backs no platform to launch any reasonable attacks from and they went down to their first home defeat 25-22. This was a dissapointing result for stoke in which the work rate of Dixon and hard-hitting of S St. Bernard stood out in an otherwise ordinary performance. Stoke must now pick themselves up for next weekends away game at Blackheath. After stand in captain Dixon stated "Weston turned up for a game and we didn't" Calder echoed these comments and added "Individually we must look at our performance but also collectively as a team. Man of the match Chimbima did what was asked of him whereas others didn't do so."

Final Score Basingstoke 22 pts v Weston-Super-Mare 25pts

NEXT GAME Saturday 15th November away to Blackheath, National 3 South. k.o 3:00 pm.
                

link to RFU site