Colchester A XV 10 | 43 Clacton RFC

The A XV hosted Clacton in their second and final pre-season game on Saturday. With Clacton also being a Level 9 team, playing in Essex 1, it would be a good match up for the 3rd and 4th XV squad. Colchester started well and with intent, breaking the Clacton defence down with some telling runs from flankers Nathan Drew and David Lawrence; quick ball resulted in centre James Pearce scoring on the left to mark the first points of the day. 5-0 to Colchester after 5 minutes.

The next 25 minutes played out mostly between the 22 metre lines, Colchester seeming to have the edge around the park against a large Clacton pack; however, with the Colchester scrum having troubles throughout, Clacton began to turn the screws and the home side found it difficult to work their way down field on their own ball. The remaining 10 minutes of the half saw Clacton score three tries to take a 5-19 advantage into the break.

Clacton begun the second half where they finished the first, notching another on 43 minutes, before Colchester had a solid period of play which resulted in the industrious openside, Drew, scoring to bring it back to 10-26 with just over 20 minutes to play. However, Clacton pushed on with their route one football – consisting of direct forward play and mauling lineouts – to squeeze three more scores before the end of the game. The final score read 10-43 to the visitors; that said, a decent amount of Colchester’s squad got some vital game time before the league starts next weekend. Credit to Clacton for a positive and worthwhile hit out for the A XV.

Alex Lacey