DISJOINTED CRANBROOK UNDERACHIEVE TO FALL TO DEFEAT.
A trip to Deal is always to be welcomed and a pre match meal and stroll around this vibrant town even on a grey but mild day without much breeze was enjoyed.
The pitch, which cut up badly in the rain last year, was firm enough although damp, making ball retention mildly tricky but in early phases it was Cranbrook that struggled in this regard undoing headway made with mishandling. In contrast the more experienced Deal team were more accurate and gained particularly from a virtuoso performance from their outside half Ollie Best, who managed the game superbly varying his running, passing and kicking plays according to what he saw in front of him.
The Cranbrook back line was, apart from Alex Cornwallis youthful in the extreme and did not make the best use of almost parity of the ball as the forwards worked diligently to provide it.
At this point it should be mentioned that Cranbrook suffered misfortune
that necccessitated a very late team change, also taking early injuries that needed further reshuffling
It was no surprise therefore that Deal were first to score a try, after an early exchange of penalties, when after 20 minutes and losing wing Jacob Isteed to a yellow card, a score from close range occurred. Two further scores occured in fairly quick succession whilst Cranbrook were reduced to 14, one from close range another by stand off Best with a curving run. It was noticeable with the slight slope, Deal were able to get over the gain line at will with too many first up tackles not taking the opposition down, so helping to provide the position for the scores. Best also added a couple more penalties to his conversions for a half time score of 27-3.
It was obvious at half time that Coach Chris Catt was critical of the effort to date, reasoning that if we could take the game to Deal and be more accurate, we could cause them some problems.
With the slope, Cranbrook did get back into the game scoring a notably skilful try as fly half Henry Milligan chipped the onrushing defence for Cornwallis to collect on the bounce, draw the fullback and set replacement Jed Westcott clear for a run into the posts,Milligan converting.to add to his early penalty. Soon with the aid of post and crossbar, Best added another penalty for a 100 percent return, but such was the improvement of Cranbrook that Deal scored no further points.
This though was as good as it got for Cranbrook as they were undone by a mixture of inaccurate passing or handling, despite several times being in promising positions, as Deal appeared to tire, being penalised several times for not rolling away at the breakdown, by a referee Mr Chris Smith, who controlled matters firmly, and happily for your correspondent was adept at signalling his decisions.
Of note were the efforts of replacements Jack Posey in the loose and Dillon Roberts playing out of position on the wing, both noticeably wholehearted in their efforts along with the effervescent Cornwallis. Despite the fairly early loss of prop Joseph Foster to injury, the scrum again went well, the lineout was also good except that a couple of throws were lost late on in attacking positions as Cranbrook sought in vain to get back into the game.
Cranbrook will look to regroup after a rest weekend, and will hope a better balanced team can be fielded against Bromley on 9th November at 2pm as the clocks have now returned to GMT.
The team was: 1 D Houghton-Judge, 2 T Humphreys, 3 O Foster, 4 D Martin, 5 T Hamphlett, 6 S Jovanovic, 7 H Overy,, 8 H Gillanders Captain, 8 D Wookey, 10 H Milligan 11 E Barbour, 12 A Cornwallis, 13 D Roberts, 14 J Isteed, 15 W Harrison.
Replacements J Brambley for Foster 25 mins, J Westcott for Isteed 45 mins and J Posey, for Martin 50 minutes., with other first half temporary replacement and positional changes.