Wells Rugby Football Club.

Saturday  26 January 2008.

Chew Valley 36 Wells 7.

As one observant Wells supporter put it, “Well it was lucky we weren’t playing Easyjet. They had seven touch downs in the eighty minutes, Chew Valley managed only five!” This a reference to the fact that standing on the touchline at this ground on the outskirts of Chew Magna, one can watch the planes on their final approach into Bristol Airport.

As it was Wells would have missed the plane, they just didn’t turn up. Maybe it was the long three week break since their last match, but at times it looked like they had not spoken to each other in that time, let alone trained together. The fact is that for all but a few isolated moments Wells were not in the game. Chew Valley not only had a large formidable pack, but their backs looked dangerous every time they had the ball and because of the dominance up front, they had a lot of ball.

Having said that, the first try after just three minutes was a gift from the visitors. Dropped ball midfield, a hack on and try under the posts. Seven nil, and seven minutes later a blatant offside by Wells gifted a further three points. To be fair the Wells defence was solid with plenty of good tackles, thankfully, other wise the score could have been up with number of passengers on one of the Easyjet planes. Still another penalty for offside saw the score mount by a further three points and then a second try for Chew Valley came initially from a catch and drive at the lineout. After making fifteen metres, or so, the ball was released left with the winger touching down in the corner.

Matters did not improve in the second half, Wells made a hash of the re-start to put themselves under pressure before conceding an easy penalty. They then gave themselves a glimmer of hope, for a change it was the hosts who dropped the ball mid-field, allowing Aaron Cook to pick up and score a try which he converted to make the score a more respectable twenty one points to seven. This however proved to be a false dawn, two more tries were conceded killing off any faint hopes of a comeback  and Wells were well beaten by the time that flight EZY 569 from Newcastle trundled through the bright skies to touch down just as Chew Valley with the final move of the match scored their fifth try.

This weekend, Wells have two home matches, on Saturday they play the re-arranged league game against Keynsham kicking off at 2.30pm. Straight after this, players and spectators and will be able to watch the Six Nations match between England and Wales on the clubs big screen kick off at 4.30. On Sunday the re-arranged Somerset Vase match against North Petherton will be played, again with a 2.30 kick off.