Taunton headed away for their last away trip of the season to Chinnor with a late change due to illness that saw Matt Roberts withdraw from the side and James Fleming come in for his first start in several weeks after picking up an injury in training and joined Toots Vakalutukali in the centre to form a new partnership with Freddie Fraser moving out to the wing to replace Roberts.
As well as being the last away game of the season it was also the last game in a Titans shirt for Jamie Forrester who leaves to go back home to Zimbabwe before coming back to the UK to further his education at Hartpury College.
Taunton lost the toss and played the first half with the wind and slope advantage and with a dominate scrum Taunton looked to control the game early on. However with the wind at their backs Taunton were guilty of giving the ball away to easily in the phases and not holding on to what would turn out to be valuable possession.
With the normal jockeying for possession at the start of the game for possession and territory it was Taunton that broke the deadlock when scrum half Stuart Townsend spotted a gap and broke blind from the scrum to score after 10 minutes with full back Gary Kingdom adding the extras to take a deserved 0 – 7 lead.
The next 30 minutes was a test for the Titans in more ways than one. After 15 minutes second row Charlie Hewitt who was making his first start in the league had to come off with a neck injury which meant that Paul Davis came on to replace him a bit earlier than expected, after playing for England Universities on the Friday night. There was a reshuffle in the pack with Brett Harvey moving back into the second row after starting at number 8 with Dan Lee moving back to 8 and Paul Davis coming on to the blind side.
3 minutes later Will Webster was yellow carded for a technical offense as Chinnor were on the attack and the corresponding penalty was kicked by Chinnor’s fly half William Millett making the score 3 – 7. Gary Kingdom then kicked penalties on 25 and 33 minutes with the latter penalty resulting in a yellow card for the home number 8 and captain Liam Gilbert. With the score now at 3 – 13 and with Taunton back to a full 15 and a man advantage it was Chinnor who increased their score, scoring a try by centre Jack Hayes, converted by Millett making the score 10 – 13. Taunton then lost two of their back line to injury with wing Ash Harney being replaced by Jack Conway and then Jamie Fleming being replaced by back row forward Ben King, who also played in the England Universities game on Friday night.
With the Titans holding on to a slim lead going into the second half it was imperative that as they played into the wind and up the slope that they controlled the ball and starved the home side of possession. That was the plan but that somewhat back fired as they lost control from a wayward pass on the half way line which was hacked through and the ball bounced up for Chinnor to break through and open side Nicholas Harrison score under the posts for Millett to convert making the score 17 – 13 after 1 minute of the second half.
For the next 25 minutes the Titans found it hard to get out of their own 22 and to a man defended everything Chinnor could through at them from driving maul to runners around the corner to spreading it wide but the Titans repelled the lot. During that time Millett kicked another penalty stretching their lead to 7 and the score 20 – 13. Titans also lost Ben King for 10 minutes due to another technical yellow card and also lost prop George Cooper to injury, replaced by Kieran Ball.
Once the Titans were back to a full 15 again they finally managed to get hold of some possession and finally got out of their own half and moved forward deeper into the Chinnor half. As Chinnor conceded penalties Taunton kicked to touch and took the lineout 15 meters out. With a clean catch and the maul set up they started to rumble towards the line and as it started to slow Jamie Forrester and Ben King ran in to add some momentum and the maul rumbled over and some how fly half Jamie Forrester managed to smuggle the ball and claim the try, probably his first ever driving maul try. This took Jamie’s points total to 101 for the season which is a nice landmark to leave on. Gary Kingdom missed the difficult kick from out wide into the wind and the score now stood at 20 -18 with 5 minutes to go.
The Titans tried to run everything to get back down into Chinnor territory to either get a penalty, drop goal or even a winning try, however Chinnor could sense that time was running out and as a win was vital to their survival in the league they managed to dig in and survive and claim the win.
The Titans claimed a losing bonus point but lost a few players to injury and didn’t really perform at their best so couldn’t really complain and playing with 14 men for twenty minutes at this level is always difficult especially away from home.