Thurrock 27

Bury St Edmunds 60

RUGBY: AT the third time of asking this re-arranged league fixture took place. On a bright and sunny afternoon at Oakfield, the pitches all looked green and sandy. And the pitch was a testament to the hard work of the ground staff who had worked very hard all week to allow the game to go ahead.

Bury lost the toss and Thurrock elected to play with a slight benefit of the wind first half. The early game was all Thurrock’s. T’s were on top in both scrummaging and line-outs.

And this was topped by a breakaway try for Thurrock.

Bradleigh Retigan made a break from the base of the scrum and after a 45m run he was stopped shy of the line. But the supporting forwards arrived in time for veteran Lee Herrington to score.

Jake Barrand easily converted taking the home side into a seven-point lead.

Although Bury were six positions ahead in this National 3 London and SE league, Thurrock were playing out of their skins. From the restart, Bury secured the ball and Radmill scooted over for Bury’s first try. Thurrock came back strongly and continued to ask a lot of the Bury defence.

A penalty to Thurrock allowed Barrand to put his kick through the uprights. But from this point on the game began to change. Bury had the better possession and excellent support runners and angles. Mann crossed the line for a try, which was converted by Rush. Within a couple of minutes of each other, Garrard and Stone also sped across the line and from a promising start Thurrock found themselves behind.

This Bury blitz hit their confidence and with the half coming to a close, Bury added another couple of trys. But they missed both conversions to lead 32-10 at the break.

Playing with the slight breeze on their backs, Bury had better possession and greater purpose.

Bixby found himself 20m out and nothing in front of him and he scored a simple converted try. Thurrock weren’t going to lie down though and came back with another try this time from Reece Durrance.

Then an painful 15-minute spell of rugby saw Bury score tries with Stone, Davis and Tanimo Samoa touching down.

Thurrock added tries thanks to the running of James Flavin and Earl Gorman, with Barrand adding a conversion. The final 10 tries to four was not a good day for Thurrock.

But the borough team kept at the job for the whole 80 minutes.

And they were in the game for lot of the match but conceding tries in spells which left them out of the running. This week Thurrock visit Barking in a bottom-of-the-table clash.