Colchester hosted Old Haberdashers from Borehamwood at their sunny Mill Road ground and, after a slow start, gave the large home crowd plenty to cheer about scoring an extravaganza of nine tries with the visitors only getting an early penalty in reply.

Leading the charge were versatile players fullback Damien Brambley and wing James Crozier who both scored twice with Crozier getting five conversions.

Unfortunately for fly-half David Higgins, he pulled a hamstring at the start of the game and was replaced by Brett Cutbush who went on to have an excellent game.

The visitors were first on the scoreboard when their fly-half converted a penalty after only five minutes play. There followed half an hour of intense rugby with honours even with both sets of forwards and backs battling for supremacy.

The impasse was broken when Colchester had a lineout on the halfway line. Hooker Dan Brennan threw an accurate long ball to No 8 Harrison Pickett who linked with scrum half Matt Wadling whose dazzling run took him around two defenders to score to the right of the posts.

From the restart lock Ollie White fielded the ball and fed flanker Ollie Pickett who charged forward, fed his brother who almost scored in the corner. After three defending scrums in the red zone the Black pack turned the ball over, it was moved left for Crozier to successfully touch down in the corner.

12-3 at half time and skipper Danny Whiteman continued to urge his players to turn defence into attack when their opponents had the ball. The team took this advice on board which led to a total rout in the second half with the Blacks scoring roughly every five minutes during the rest of the match.

Brambley was excelling in the dry conditions constantly coming into the backline to move the ball into Old Habs' half. Once such move resulted in him feeding wing Harry Barton who swiftly made ground, moved the ball to centre Brock Price who palmed it back to Brambley for a score under the posts.

Shortly after this, the visitors had a player yellow- carded for obstruction and this seemed to open the flood gates. Before long Brambley initiated another attack that ended with Man-of-the-Match prop James Mitchell powering over for the bonus point fourth try.

Coach Anthony O'Riordan made changes bringing Brennan and Ollie Pickett off in exchange for Dan Hexley and Joe Flexman.

After yet another successful scrum halfway up the pitch, Wadling fed Crozier who jinked through for his second try. Later Colchester turned over a visitors' scrum and the ball was passed swiftly through several hands for Harrison Pickett to get a score.

41-3 with ten minutes left but Colchester did not ease off and another attack by Crozier led to Price going over minutes later.

The icing on the cake happened as time was running out when Flexman started a brilliant bit of interplay which resulted in him claiming the last try of this impressive victory.

Steve Whiteman