Brentwood travelled in a confident mood last Saturday, standing top of London 1 North table with a 100% record of 5 wins from 5 games, to play Luton sitting at the foot of the table without a victory in their opening 5 games. A club who had had a poor start to the season following the resignation of their head coach, and the defection of many of their senior players to a Hertfordshire club playing at a higher level in the RFU league structure.

Over the last couple of seasons, when taking on clubs further down the league table, complacency has often crept into the Brentwood mind set and led to the club losing games which on paper they should have won easily, this certainly was not the case today but Brentwood came up against a resolute opposition who worked extremely hard for each other, and whose never say die attitude, gave the away side many uncomfortable moments.

Brentwood kicked off on a dry autumn afternoon, ideal to play the game of rugby, and it became apparent from the early scrums that the away side forwards would dominate this area of the game, but were continually penalised by the referee for infringements, some of which totally mystified the players, coaches, and travelling Brentwood supporters, the net result being that time and time again Brentwood found themselves defending and the majority of the 1st half was played in the Brentwood territory.

When they did manage to go on the attack, excellent tackling by Luton, and poor handling by the Brentwood players meant that Brentwood never got into their stride and at times found themselves defending ferociously, as Luton grew in confidence as the game progressed.

After 20 minutes, on one of Brentwood occasional visits to the opposition 22, they were awarded a 5 metre scrum, the Brentwood forwards drove the opposition scrum towards the try line – a try looked inevitable, but the ball was knocked on.
Luton then went on the attack, and after good play by both forwards and backs, with the line at their mercy, and a try looking a certainty , they also knocked on so that after 30 minutes the score stood at nil all.

At this stage with injuries to Bird and full back Gillett, Brentwood were forced to make changes with Simpson coming off the bench to slot in at standoff, winger Stanier going to full back, and wing forward Aldous moving from the pack to the unfamiliar position on the wing, and replaced in the back by the veteran Tom King. These injuries were followed shortly by the loss of prop Bevans–Royston to be replaced by Lewis Pratley.
Setbacks of these sorts in the past would have seen the team lose confidence, but it shows the quality of the squad available, that if anything these changes galvanised the team into action, and after some slick passing through the hands of the backs winger Ed Greenfield raced away on a 60 metre run, beating the covering opposition to score in the corner. Tom Simpson converted taking the half time score to 0-7.

Brentwood had a much better second half, beginning to move the ball between forwards and backs, with good foraging runs from Josh Woodcock, and Nick Binet, being a feature, and played most of the half in Luton territory. Yet again the Brentwood forwards were dominant at scrum time, but were regularly penalised by the referee, and unable to use their superiority to build a platform to make further attacks into the Luton defence.

Brentwood did score 3 further tries all converted by Tom Simpson, thus gaining the all-important bonus point. Firstly after a great run by Josh Stannard, scrum half Luke Green crashed over the line to finish of a good move, secondly Tom Simpson danced through the Luton defence to score an excellent try, and finally No8 Nick Binet dived over the line following a period of intense pressure put on the Luton defence by the Brentwood forwards.

Luton always looked dangerous on the break and scored an excellent converted try and a penalty, leaving the final score at 10-28 in favour of Brentwood.

Chigwell Construction man of the match was Captain Josh Woodcock

Although, another away win the fourth of the season compared with only three away wins all through last season, a feeling of anti – climax hung over the Brentwood players, coaches and supporters at the end of the game, many felt that they could have done better and that they will have to up their game in the future, if the club hopes to stay as serious contenders for promotion.
However a win is a win, and Brentwood sit proudly at the top of the table, on 29 points, 4 points ahead of their nearest rivals Tring.
The Brentwood 2nd XV also won at home last weekend beating Barking by nine points leaving the score at Brentwood II's 33 Barking II's 24.

This coming Saturday the 17th Brentwood have no league game providing a chance for the injured players to recover prior to the big local derby on 24 October, when Thurrock visit King Georges. This is always an entertaining game with the added spice this year of being a match between two teams with serious ambitions of gaining promotion. Kick-off is at the unusually early time of 1pm to tie in with the world cup semi-finals kicking off later in the day.