London Welsh 10  Moseley  40 - October 27th 2007

MOSELEY: Williams; Winter, Adams, Cox, Norton; Macdonald (Jones,61), Ireland (capt.); Williams (Buxton 77), Caves (McMillan 40), Bayliss (Sigley 48), Bignell (Uzoigwe 73), Stott, Evans, Atkinson, Lightowler.

SCORERS - Moseley: Tries: Adams, Caves, Winter, Bignell, Cox (2); Cons: MacDonald (3), Jones (2)

London Welsh: Tries: Strong. Cons: Morgan. Pen: Morgan.

Scintillating start sets up Moseley league best  - Birmingham Post

London Welsh 10 Moseley 40

After watching a run of relatively poor performances the band of die-hard Moseley supporters who made the journey to Richmond would have been travelling more in hope rather than expectation of this convincing victory.

After all, Old Deer Park has never been a happy hunting ground for the Billesley Common club and, with a side missing half a dozen injured players who might be considered first-choice, connections could be forgiven for thinking that this was a time to circle the wagons.

That this result came about said much for the collective spirit on view but also was in no small way aided by a scintillating start to the match in which the red and blacks racked up 21 unanswered points in the first quarter of an hour to effectively end the contest.

Moseley kicked off with the wind and the Welsh forwards failed to control the ball, which was secured with alacrity by the visiting pack. The ball went swiftly through the hands of the half-backs and, with space at his disposal, centre Jack Adams was able to shimmy his way over under the posts. This came within an official 20 seconds of the whistle, which must be close to some sort of record.

Greg Macdonald, having a rare start at fly half, made the simple conversion and followed up, doing the honours to two further tries, by hooker Adam Caves and wing Ollie Winter, both coming from good work by the forwards.

Apart from occasional Welsh attacks, Moseley enjoyed most of the first-half possession and territory and, with a little more precision, could have scored at least one more try.

The new combination of James Ireland, who was captaining the side for the first time, and Greg Macdonald, mixed their plays well and with centres Paul Cox and Adams getting the early ball they need Moseley were playing more football since the first weeks of September.

Welsh started the second half as if they had received the proverbial half-time rocket and Moseley defended sternly until their line was eventually broken by wing James Strong.

With fly half Gareth Morgan converting this, and then kicking a penalty awarded when a Moseley forward strayed off-side at a ruck, it seemed that the contest was far from over.

Within a couple of minutes, though, came a Moseley score out of nothing when flanker Richie Bignell swerved and side-stepped in from 30 metres for a fine individual try.

The last quarter of the contest was noteworthy for the way in which Moseley defended stoutly. In the dying minutes of the match tenacious Paul Cox was rewarded with a try on each side of the pitch, both being converted by Matt Jones who had replaced Macdonald on the hour.

Moseley have a difficult sequence of matches in November and a delighted head coach Ian Smith praised the way in which his team had achieved their biggest victory since returning to National One at the start of last year.

He said: "Today we played the sort of running rugby which we work hard at in training in order to replicate in matches. The lads who have come into the side have performed well and illustrate that we have more strength in depth than I think many realise."