Basildon Rugby Club win first game of the season after beating Beaconsfield (From Echo)

Basildon Rugby Club win first game of the season after beating Beaconsfield

10:00am Tuesday 9th October 2012 in Sport By Chris Phillips

BASILDON recorded their first win of the season, beating fellow strugglers Beaconsfield 24-12.

Both sides went in to the game without a victory in their first five outings of the season.

But it was Basildon who were able to end the run of bad results.

The first half was a nervous, affair with both sides having some good periods of play spoilt by handling mistakes.

However, on 24 minutes Basildon scored the only points of the half with a Brad Johnson penalty.

After the break, good pressure from the Basildon pack resulted in second row Mitch Cairns charging down a clearance kick and flanker Joe Green pounced on the loose ball to plunge over from close range.

Johnson converted from out wide to give Basildon a 10-0 lead but this seemed to galvanise the home side and they had their best spell of the match scoring two good tries with some powerful running and skillful passing from their impressive backs.

Only one of the tries was converted but Beaconsfield still had the lead at 12-10.

In reply, Basildon began to up the pace and, following a break from centre Daniel Dieu de la Bellefontaine, super sub Jim Harman forced his way over from five metres.

Johnson converted and the visitors were 17-12 in front.

The Basildon pack were now catching and driving very well from the line out and camped on the Beaconsfield line looking for their third try.

Twice they were adjudged to have been held up with prop Dave Stevens particularly unlucky not to have scored.

But it was another sub, prop Wayne Stuckey, who got the deserved try going over from a matter of inches.

One last conversion from Johnson, who kicked superbly all match, made sure of the win and moved Basildon off the foot of the table.