20th Oct 2007 - London SE4 League Bognor 19 - Beccehamian 7 Beccs travelled down to Bognor with high hopes of upsetting the league leaders. Like previous weeks Beccs started the game strongly with the pack gaining yards from attacking around the fringes and putting the hosts on the back foot. Despite this some early silly penalties by Beccs gave the Bognor fly-half a simple penalty chance where he made no mistake in giving his side an early 3-0 lead. Beccs opened the try scoring on 10 minutes from a scrum 15 yards in field and 40 yards out from the Bognor try line, Chitty picked up at 8, fed scrum half Jason Obee who flat pass to full back Neil Paige attacking the line at pace beating two defenders and the full back for another trademark try thanks to blistering pace and footwork – Centre Joe Goodwillie added the extras with a conversion. For the first 20 minutes all was well then came the injuries which ultimately disrupted the rhythm Beccs had worked so hard to achieve. First fly half Alex Darroch went off with pulled hamstring, Goodwillie moved to fly half, wing Sam Painter to Centre and Tom Peacock came off the bench onto the wing. Beccs finished the half defending a slim lead manfully inside their own half thanks to the hard yards being made by the Bognor pack. Score remained 7-3 thanks to a great defensive effort from the whole team. Half-time brought further injury to prop Gareth Robinson, replaced by Phil Reid. Beccs refused to give up but neither would Bognor and with the advantage of the slight slope the Bognor 10 continually kicked his side downfield into Beccs territory where they would remain for most of the half. Goodwillie’s injury jinx continued and on 60 mins (ish?!) and went off with an injury to the same knee he spent over a year on the sidelines recovering from. Centre Kemp moved to fly-half and back row replacement Dan Harding came to fill the vacant 12 berth. Having kept the home side scoreless for nearly an hour and with just 15 minutes remaining the continual pressure on the visitors gave their kicker 3 relatively simple chances which again were coolly slotted to give a 12-7 advantage. Bognor finished strongly with a try from their centre and successful conversion to run out 19-7 winners. The very fact Beccs limited Bognor to a late converted try and 4 cheap penalties is due to all 18 Beccs players given everything they had for 80 minutes, 60 minutes of which was heroic defending camped inside their own half. Bognor deserved the win to maintain their top of the table status whilst Beccs will assess the injury list before tackling Charlton Park Away next week.