A closely fought contest, but victory to the Fishermen

At least Chiltern earned a losing bonus point and showed how much they have improved, considering the heavy 77 point defeat to Brixham earlier in the season.

Chiltern started strongly and a good set of phases gave a big overlap for tight head prop Rei Manaia to score in the left corner, unconverted for an early 5-0 lead. A few minutes later the home team thought they had extended their lead again when they broke through the left hand side, only to hear to the referee's whistle for a marginal forward pass.

Brixham began to claw their way back into the match and despite some tenacious defending from Chiltern, a set piece move off the back of a scrum and subsequent rolling maul allowed the Brixham centre to exploit a gap and score under the posts, the conversion putting them into a 5-7 lead. The game became a battle of the forwards with Chiltern dominating the scrum, but unable to stop the opponent's main attacking weapon of the driving maul. In fact, Brixham extended their lead with a series of driving mauls, resulting in Chiltern's hooker Tom Blackburn being yellow carded and a try, this time unconverted for a 7-12 score.

Then followed a great Chiltern try. Starting in their own 22, Rhys Keith made a break and passed to right winger Tim Lloyd who made rapid progress up to Brixham's 22 until surrounded by Brixham cover defenders. He didn't panic nor run into touch but put in a brilliant cross kick just in front of the posts for the supporting centre David Skelton to score. It was converted by Hilton Mudariki, for a half-time score of 12-12.

The opposition had realised Chiltern's weakness in defending the maul and the second half started in the same way as the first half ended - a second yellow card, this time for No.8 Adam Henderson, and a series of rolling mauls leading to a third try for Brixham, extending their lead to 12-19.

Chiltern were far from out of this game and started to mount more attacking phases, one of which led to a 40 metre penalty kicked by Hilton Mudariki to bring Chiltern within 4 points of their opponents. Chiltern attacked again but after a long aimless kick out of defence by the Brixham full back, a loose long pass from Chiltern on halfway gifted an interception to the Brixham centre and he ran 60 metres to score, the conversion gave them a lead of 15-26.

However Chiltern seemed to be spurred on by this, attacking relentlessly and spending much of the last ten minutes camped deep in Brixham's half. A drive towards their line and a yellow card for Brixham's scrum half gave Chiltern a 5-metre scrum from which a great switch move saw captain Craig Webb crash over, the try being converted again by Mudariki, this time off the post, bringing the score to 22-26.

This set up a frantic last five minutes, however, despite some ferocious Chiltern attacks, Brixham held out for the win. After the match the Chiltern coaches reflected on the number of penalties, unforced errors and yellow cards conceded as the major contributors to their downfall - some things to work on in training ahead of the away trip to Chippenham next week.