Wimbledon 49 - Beckenham 3

Tries came at regular intervals during this game when Wimbledon fielded very nearly their strongest team. They also were able to welcome back off the bench late in the second half no.8 Gary Crowe and flanker Chris Lewis after long injury lay-offs.

Beckenham opened the scoring after 5 minutes after a high tackle in front of the posts saw their centre James Curr take an easy kick to given them the lead. Nothing else much went right for the home team and a half-time score of 25 - 3 against them after Wimbledon had scored tries through Jack Fishwick, Tommy Moore and Fishwick again with conversions for two of them and two penalties from captain Neil Hallett. Tait was also heavily involved in Wimbledon's fourth try when he made a powerful run to the corner, dumped would-be tackler Rogers on his back and offloaded to Fishwick to score.

With a breeze in their faces Beckenham knew they were in for a long second half but they tackled well to earn themselves nothing but respect and avoid a possible rout. This time the tries came from scrum half Rhys Morgan, after passes from Crowe and Lewis, then Neil Hallett and finally a second try for Crowe himself, for the first time Hallett had the rare sight of a kick hitting the post to miss the conversion. But his final conversion attempt had no mistake to it.

What must have impressed the coaching team was the fact that in this match there were spells of domination in all phases of the game, scrum and lineout went well and the back row were first to the breakdown for nearly all of the game. Credit here to the Wimbledon flankers Rob Tait and Steve May. In the centre Neil Brown made some powerful runs and at full back Tommy Moore showed his technique when he stopped Beckenham second row Pat Hooton in his tracks with a powerful tackle. With this team Wimbledon are a match for any other team in the league, let us hope it can play together for the remaining ten matches!

Next Saturday Wimbledon will play at home to Sutton & Epsom with a 2.15pm start.