March Bears make it nine wins from nine with hard-fought victory

March Bears 19, Cantabs 2nd 14

Eastern Counties 1 West

On a very foggy, very cold Saturday afternoon March Bears had their hardest match of the season against Cantabs from Cambridge.

Played on a pitch in surprisingly good condition which is a testament to the time and money invested in the playing surface by March Bears over the past two seasons, this was one of the few matches to be contested in the region at the weekend.

This was never going to be an easy match between these two teams who were first and second in the league, with Cantabs having only lost once, right at the beginning of the season, and the Bears with an unbeaten record

The Bears started the scoring after eight minutes with a kick through by Harvey Davies which bounced beautifully into his arms, allowing him to speed through and go over under the posts. Sam Howat added the conversion.

The game continued with some fierce rucking and mauling and even when the ball went out to the backs there was no give at all by either side.

However, after 17 minutes Bears produced one of their typical recycling moves seen so often this season which saw Callum Campbell fly down the wing and touch down in the corner. This wasn’t converted .

It looked like this was going to be another display of Bears racking up a large score but Cantabs stuck to it and after 35 minutes produced an excellent forward move, cutting through the Bears defence and reducing the score to 12-7 which then stayed the score at the turnaround.

The second half saw a very unusual situation for the Bears when Cantabs added a second converted try after 48 minutes to see the home side having to contemplate coming back from behind to win for the first time this season.

Both teams stuck to the task but March Bears were unrelenting and applied themselves to the task which saw a great back move in the 60th minute, with Will Paul cutting through at speed to give the Bears a converted try by Howat and putting them back in the lead at 19-14.

The final quarter was attritional and the Cantabs number 13 was sin-binned for a cynical try-stopping block as an end-to-end period ensued but with no addition to the score line by either side.

The Bears had won again, the ninth time in a row, seeing them now extending their lead at the top of the table to nines point but what a game this was, watched by the largest crowd of the season which considering the temperature dropped to minus two degrees during the match, deserves a mention for their endurance as well.