NATIONAL 2 SOUTH


Southend Saxons...........................20
Cambridge......................................36

 

SOUTHEND Saxons’ director of rugby Chris Green slammed his side’s poor performance after they slipped to a 36-20 defeat against Cambridge at Warners Bridge on Sunday.

Saxons went in to the game on the back of three successive victories.

But they came crashing back down to earth against Cambridge.

“I thought it was a poor overall performance from us if I’m being honest,” said Green.

“Our defending was poor, we were rolled off tackles and there was no structure to our attacking play which was disappointing.

“However, credit must go to Cambridge because they played a really good brand of rugby.”

But Southend’s plans were thrown in to chaos at the start of the game when in-form centre Chris Vaughan suffered a back injury in the warm up and was forced to pull out of the starting line-up.

Two minutes in to the game, influential fly-half Tom Ashton hobbled off with a calf injury.

And Green felt the withdrawals affected his side’s display.

“Both Tom and Chris have been outstanding for us lately so losing them was a real blow,” said the director of rugby.

“We ended up having to play four wingers in our backs and it certainly made a difference.”

However, Southend initially started brightly at the weekend and took the lead in the ninth minute when Brad Burr kicked a penalty.

But Cambridge soon hit back when their impressive back row Joseph Collingham intercepted a pass from Mark Billings and raced 60 yards to touch down under the posts.

Gerhard Bosholf added the conversion but Burr then cut Cambridge’s lead to 7-6 with another penalty.

After that though, Cambridge started to take control with Collingham completing his hat-trick with two more tries.

Peter Kolakowski also touched down and, with Bosholf adding two conversions, the visitors led 26-13 at half-time.

After the break, Southend hit back with a penalty try which Burr converted before Collingham again took centre stage, scoring his fourth effort of the day.

Saxons soon replied with prop forward Aston Bevans-Royston touching down and Burr kicking the conversion.

But Cambridge had the final say with replacement Ross Kevan charging through to complete the scoring and make it 36-20 to his team.

The defeat saw Southend slip to 11th in the National Two South standings but they remain just five points behind sixth placed Old Elthamians ahead of Saturday’s trip to Clifton.

Southend: Meads, Billings, Nash, Burr, Driver, Ashton, Powell, Strachan, Bloomberg, Bevans-Royston, Chesney, Jackson, Ferrier, Kellard, Hudson. Replacements: Farrell, Smith, Bennett, Shields and Branch.