Huge vociferous support was additionally offered to the home side by the 155 current and past members of the Club that sat down for the prestigious annual President’s Luncheon in the Clubhouse prior to the game. The home side welcomed back wingers Tim Lloyd and Sam Portland, who both featured conspicuously in the game.

The undoubted highlight of the day was the parachute jump onto the 1st team pitch made by eight members of the Red Devils, in tribute to a former Chiltern player and officer in the parachute regiment, Jack Grayburn, who lost his life defending the bridge at Arnhem 70 years ago this year for which he was posthumously awarded the VC. The paras dropped in clutching the day’s match ball, which was presented to the Club Chairman Richard Bobbett and the VC and other medals which were presented to Grayburn’s son. The event was a planned precursor to the Club’s tour to Arnhem which will take place at the beginning of May, when there will be games of rugby against Arnhem RFC “The Pigs” and remembrance tribute in Grayburn’s memory.

Playing into the blustery wind, Chiltern started rather hesitantly and kept falling foul of the referee, giving away numerous penalties, fortunately for them none converted into points. After 20 minutes, however, a fine break by Ross Bugden was carried on and resulted in a penalty to the home side, converted by David John for a 3-0 lead. From the restart, however, and much against the run of play, the visitors produced a vigorous attack which caught the home side rather flat-footed and a try was scored on the right, unconverted, but giving them the lead at 3-5. On the half hour, the home side made a driving move down the left hand side of the pitch featuring some great support play and giving a try to No.8, Tom “Truffles” Blackburn under the posts, converted by John, to retake the lead at 10-5. Five minutes later a similar move led to a try this time for prop Stuart Day, unconverted, but increasing the lead to 15-5. It was then the turn of the home side’s backs and, on the stroke of half time, a superb lineout catch by 1st team debutant, second-row Tony Machado, followed by swift passing along the line produced a try for Portland. The conversion was missed, but Chiltern went into the dressing room with a 20-5 lead.

Now playing with the wind behind them and obviously buoyed by the tremendous support and, simply, the whole occasion, the home side went on to produce some blistering rugby in the second half that the visitors, at times, struggled to cope with. Forwards and backs combined superbly at pace, scrum-half Jack Kenyon jinked his way through the defence on a number of occasions and tries by Ross Bugden and David John, another for Portland and a hat-trick by Tim Lloyd, plus three conversions by John, put the game out of sight for the home side.

Frustration told for the visitors with 10 minutes to go, when Kenyon was taken out possibly illegally which led to a mass brawl for several minutes and the sin-binning of the visitor’s loose-head prop and home side flanker Danny Samuels and straight after, a mistake by the Chiltern backs was pounced on, giving them a consolation try, but two more tries by the home side soon after made the final score 51-10 and them a well-deserved victory.

The win takes Amersham & Chiltern up to fifth in the table. Next week they will play high-flying Redingensians away which should be a serious test of the position they are now at this stage of the season.

March report by Andy Gillanders