12:00pm Tuesday 16th March 2010
By Chris Phillips
SOUTHEND Rugby Club surged up to fourth in the National Two South standings with a hard fought 19-16 win at Dings Crusaders on Saturday.
The Seasiders trailed 16-12 with just 16 minutes remaining at Landseer Avenue. But a converted try from Mike Stanley secured a sixth win in seventh game for Southend, much to the delight of head coach Andy Holloway.
“We made life hard for ourselves but got there in the end and showed great character to do it,” said Holloway.
“We should have killed the game off inside the opening 30 minutes but wasted several good chances and that allowed Dings Crusaders back in to the game.
“We scored late on though and that made sure of another good win for us.”
Things started brightly enough for Southend when Stanley scored a smart drop goal in the second minute before a couple of penalties from both fly halves - Thomas Luktaniec and Dan Boughtwood, moved the score to 6-3 in Southend’s favour.
However, the officials then also joined in with the mistakes as Dings centre Neil Dipple picked the ball up from the bottom of a ruck in their half and ran straight between two Dings forwards walking slowly back from an already offside position with their hands in air.
None of Southend's defenders were able to get to him and he ran the length of the field to score.
Southend’s protests were waved away and the successful conversion from Luktaniec took the score to 10-6.
Among the scrappy play, Boughtwood scored another penalty and the half finished 10-9 in favour of Dings.
The second half resumed in a similar fashion to the first.
A couple more penalties from both sides advanced the score sheet to 13-12 before Danny Cleare was yellow carded for his first offence and Dings Thomas Luktaniec, hoofed the ball over from the resulting penalty to make it 16 – 12.
Dings were applying the pressure but Southend were starting to play and looked like scoring from a neat little chip through by Hoult that was being hunted down by Mark Billings but another whistle bought proceedings to a halt and the play dragged back 50 metres for a perceived penalty offence that had taken place some time previously under the watchful eye of one of the touch judges.
Southend were not to be denied though and pressure saw Dings hooker Adam Chaplin sin binned.
Advantage was duly taken when Stanley capped a good performance and dived over for a try that was converted by Simon Hoult. That put Southend 19-16 in front and they held on despite some very late heavy pressure from their hosts.
>Southend: Hoult, Billings, Vaughan, Stanley, Cleare, Boughtwood, Jay, Williams, Keenan, Armitage, McClintock, Waring, Green, Barker, CookReplacements: Flexman, Greer, Connors, Sansom and Flexman.
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