UNBELIEVABLE JEFF ROYALS FIGHT BACK TO TAKE POINT

By ANDY PRESTON apreston@wokingham.today

JEFF HENDRICK’s unstoppable volley ensured that Reading FC completed a comeback to take a point against Watford.

The Royals found themselves staring down the barrel of a home defeat after the Hornets had taken the lead through Ismaila Sarr and quickly added to their advantage after the break through Ryan Porteous.

However, Paul Ince’s side came fighting back to ensure that they continued their impressive

Championship home form with a Tom Ince penalty that was followed by Hendrick’s thunderous equaliser.

“I don’t score often, but they tend to be good goals,” said Hendrick after he netted his fourth league goal of the season.

“It’s nice to get on the scoresheet and help the team get something out of the game and we could have gone on to win it.

“We’ve showed character throughout the season. We kept going, got the goals and could have got a third as well.” n Match report page 22

The defeat means that the Royals drop down the Women’s Super League table and are just four points above bottom side Leicester City, who have two games in hand.

Chambers was disappointed after her side didn’t have anything to show from an impressive opening display.

“For the first-half, I thought we were great,” said Chambers.

“We had a great deal of control and the second-half we didn’t match that level of intensity so that’s disappointing.

“I think you can see from the girls’ reaction, as well as mine, that we’re very disappointed not to come away with anything and it makes our job a lot harder now.”

The Royals manager has demanded her team to show fight in order to improve their situation after they dropped down to 11th.

She continued: “Now is the time to fight, stand up and be counted in every second of our upcoming games as the size of them now are huge.

“It’s hard to identify what went wrong, I need to look back and analyse it in full. I said to the girls at the end that they are two simple goals we’ve conceded, we can’t lose our individual physical battles like we did.

“To concede so soon after the first, we cannot allow that. We got rolled over the pitch far too easily so for us individually, we must do better it’s as simple as that.”

Reaction

Rugby Union

By RICHARD ASHTON sport@wokingham.today

Darlington 21

Rams 43

A STUNNING first-quarter blitz put RAMS back on top of the National One table.

They enjoyed a 43-21 bonus-point victory on an entertaining afternoon at Darlington Mowden Park.

The hosts missed an early chance to take the lead as Matt Minogue’s 40-metre penalty drifted just right of the posts, and it was RAMS who then went down the other end to get their noses in front.

A line-out steal precipitated the visitors going through the phases, and some lovely handling saw the returning Tarek Haffar touch down on the right, Alex Seers with a magnificent conversion. The lead was doubled almost immediately as livewire scrum-half Ollie Allan spotted a gap to race 60 metres for a birthday score, Seers making no mistake for 14-0.

Things got even better when more fabulous handling ended with Axel Kalling-Smith crossing on the left, Seers with another beautiful kick, and the visitors sealed the bonus with a try-of-the-season contender.

James McRae started it with a marvellous break from his own 22 to his opponents, and Seers’ majestic cross-field kick was collected by KallingSmith for a beauty.

The conversion made it 28-0 inside the opening 20 minutes, but DMP hit back straight away after the visitors failed to regain the restart, some fine work ending with Chris McTurk on the left.

Minogue landed the extras, and he did the same again after Henry Hadfield’s excellent individual score saw him burst through a couple of would-be tackles to touch down by the posts.

RAMS rallied and Seers strolled over to give the visitors a 33-14 half-time advantage, only blighted by a Will Partington yellow card for an infringement inside his own five metres.

The lead was extended early in the second period as Connor Hayhow cut a beautiful line to take a Robbie Stapley pass and charge over on the left, Allan’s conversion from out wide rebounding off the right-hand post.

Darlington continued to battle and claimed their third try when impressive inside centre Ben Frankland burst through before freeing Callum Pascoe for a simple run-in.

Another Minogue conversion cut the gap to 38-21, but RAMS reasserted their control as a delightful Partington grubber kick was hoovered up by Jak Rossiter to dive over for his 15th try of a productive campaign.

As the game wore on it finally lost some of its pace, the away side seeing the contest out despite Mowden Park putting them under some pressure late in the piece.

By RICHARD ASHTON sport@wokingham.today

SEB Reynolds believes RAMS played some of their best rugby of the season during their win at Darlington Mowden Park on Saturday.

Reflecting on his side’s opening assault, the Director of Rugby said:

“It was very impressive.

“It was nice coming here, a magnificent stadium, good atmosphere, a good surface to play on and both teams wanting to play rugby – the first half-hour produced a roller-coaster of a game.

“I thought we established a good platform with very good defensive sets and at the set-piece, and then we got on the attack and took the game away from them quite early.