On a glorious autumnal morning with near perfect playing conditions, Our second home game of the season saw a strong Westcliff side come to visit with a very large squad (28).

The game was split into 15-minute quarters and started quickly with Westcliff touching down inside the first 30 seconds. Despite conceding quickly, Braintree shook off the setback and competed well, putting in some hard running and stringing some extended periods of passing together. Despite their efforts at the end of the first quarter, Westcliff had scored two more times.

The second quarter saw Westcliff rotate their entire team and again the home side battled hard. At half time the score was 0-30.The second half again saw some great passing and a few standout runs by our backs, but come the final whistle Westcliff had scored 6 more times.

Despite the score line, the coaching team were unanimous in the opinion that the performance of all the players, and the team’s performance collectively was one of the best in recent memory. The forwards scrummaged hard and put in a tremendous amount of effort throughout the entire match, and the backs passed and ran well, as well as supporting at the breakdown.

The opposition were probably one of the strongest we will face this season and with the added extra squad depth meant that Braintree were effectively playing against two teams and had to work twice as hard to compete, which they all did to a man. Lots of positives to take from this match and bring forward into the rest of the season.