Mud, hail, snow, sleet, rain and more mud as Tigers slide to victory

 🏆 Counties 1 Eastern Counties

📆 15th February 2025

🆚 Colchester 11s

On Saturday, the Ely Tigers hosted Colchester IIs as they aimed to build on their victory from the previous week. The warm-up was marked by challenging weather conditions, including rain, hail, sleet, and snow, which persisted throughout the game and made play difficult.

At 25 minutes, Ely had their first scoring opportunity with a penalty kick taken by Rhys Williams Goldman, resulting in a 3-0 lead. Ten minutes later, at 35 minutes, Ely capitalized on the advantage with Williams Goldman delivering a cross-field kick that was successfully received by Matt McCarthy, who then scored. The conversion was added, bringing the score to 10-0.

Ely's next offensive move was led by the impressive speed of Luke Turner, allowing John Surbey to score in the corner. However, the conversion attempt fell short, leaving the score at 15-0. During first-half injury time, Colchester managed to push Ely back to their line, scoring a try and successfully converting it, adjusting the score to 15-7, at half time the game reminded me of travelling to Swaffham during the 2015/16 season when you couldn't see who was who as the shirts were all a nice shade of mud !

In the second half, Ely scored first with McCarthy crossing the try line once again, making the score 20-7. The back line of Ely demonstrated resilience as the visitors camped out on the Ely try line for 13 minutes but were unable to penetrate their defence. A restart by Ely enabled them to escape their own half and add another 5 points when Joel Scott Paul crossed the try line to score.

From the restart, Colchester initiated another attack and scored a try in the corner, although the conversion was missed. Deep into added time, Colchester continued to press forward, but the Tigers maintained a firm defence under challenging conditions. The final score was 25-12 in favor of Ely, moving the Tigers up to 7th place in the league, the team will look to make it three wins in a row as they travel to bottom of the league side, Cantabs.