On a bright but chilly day, Colchester travelled to Berkshire to play near bottom of the league Amersham but lost the match so, although they are champions of the league their record of 20 match wins came to an end.

When the sides met in the reverse fixture Colchester won 38-12 but this was a different story. Amersham were fighting to stay up in Regional 1 South East and started the match well scoring 3 tries inside of 20 minutes.

Due to injuries and unavailability, the Blacks had had to make 9 changes in the squad.
No 8 Danny Whiteman skippered the team in the absence of Cam Kerr. Beside other changes of personnel in the team, the 3 substitutes had all come up from the Ravens. These were forwards Harry Pemberton and George Acland with back Chris Dudman joining them on the bench.

Within 5 minutes of the visitors’ kick off Amersham’s right winger Josh Fisher touched down, however fullback Louie Mould missed the conversion. 10 minutes later the hosts’ blindside flanker Mike Everett completed a good forwards attack by grounding the ball for a second unconverted try. Shortly after this, Amersham came back at Colchester from the restart and their forwards attacked in the red zone.

Despite desperate defence by the Blacks, Alex Bower their scrum half, dived over by the posts for a try that Mould converted - 17-0 much to the annoyance of shell-shocked Colchester. Admittedly the scrum had been weakened just before this 3rd try by the referee giving 2nd row Ben Kelland a yellow card for an infringement.

Ten minutes later, when Kelland returned, the Blacks raised their game and, following several line-outs, which they won, they moved the ball along the backs to score in the left hand corner with centre Will Blakemore touching down an unconverted try.

17-5 and a resurgent Colchester attacked the hosts again and again with only good defence keeping them out.

Following a successful scrum on the halfway line Colchester attacked, via fullback Jonah Varela, who moved the ball through quick hands to the left for scrum half Joe Pattinson to score an unconverted try bringing the half time score to 17-10.

After the interval Amersham kicked off and soon were awarded a scrum on their 10 metre line. Urged on by their large crowd of supporters, they kicked the ball to touch 5 metres from the Blacks’ try line. Winning the thrown in ball they performed a good catch and drive movement bustling over the line for a touchdown.

Not long after this the hosts were back again in Colchester’s red zone to score a similar try, 29-10 and things looked bleak for the Blacks. However, towards the end of the match they won a scrum against a weakened home pack who had had the loose-head Doug Magregor Smith off the field, having been yellow carded for a high tackle.

A quick penalty was tqken by fly half Henry Newman and the ball got through several hands for Blakemore to get his 2nd converted try. On the 48th minute of the 2nd half the referee blew for the end of this tough game leaving the Colchester boys disappointed to lose their unbeaten record.