Maidenhead survive last-gasp drama to claim vital basement battle victory

Photo credit: Paul Morgan

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There was a thrilling conclusion to Maidenhead’s basement battle with Hammersmith & Fulham in London on Saturday.

With 10 minutes to play, Maids had determinedly fought their way into a seemingly unassailable 21-34 lead. However, Hammersmith put the cat amongst the pigeons when they touched the ball down with two minutes to play, and a further score, deep into added time, gave them one final kick for glory.

To the relief of head coach David Mobbs-Smith and his players, that conversion attempt drifted just wide of the posts and Maids held on for a nervy 34-33 win which lifts them to ninth in the table – now eight points above relegation rivals Hammersmith.

New signing Boris Ames scored two tries after coming in on the wing for the visitors, while former colt Lucas Norton – playing at scrum half also scored a brace as Maids clung on for one of their most important wins this season and their first win away from Braywick Park.

Speaking this week, Mobbs-Smith said Maids’ score just before half-time changed the narrative of the game and gave them the momentum to go on and claim victory.

“It was a thriller,” he said. “It was a basement battle to start with, and it was away at their place, which has been a difficult ground for us.

“It hasn’t been an easy place for us to play. We started the game and they managed to get a lead. They scored in the first few minutes of the game. We then managed to score a try but missed the conversion. Within 15 minutes it was 10-5 to them and they would have been quietly confident, I’m sure.

“We managed to get a try in the 21st minute and from then on, the game was tit for tat through to half-time. They stretched their lead to 18-12, but just before half-time we got a try that got us back into the game. It was absolutely crucial.

“If you score either side of half-time, it can change the game. That’s exactly what happened. We then came out for the second half and managed to get our fourth try early on. At that point we were in the lead by 24-18, having only been losing minutes earlier in terms of the game time.

“That gave us hope of winning, but they pegged us back with a penalty and then we got a penalty to re-establish that lead. When we scored with about 10 minutes to go, it was 21-34 to us.

“We thought that might be it, but they scored a try with a couple of minutes to go, and then they scored another try well into extra time and missed the kick to win the game.

“He’s a good kicker, and he would normally kick it, but on this occasion, it shaved the post. It was on his favoured side so he would have been disappointed. It felt like his first miss of the day.

“It was a subdued victory because the team understood how important this win was. There wasn’t much over celebrating.

“We’d done the job, but this was the first part of several things we must do to ensure our survival. We delivered it just.”

Mobbs-Smith added that he’s looking at Maidenhead’s season as a ‘realist’, rather than a ‘pessimist’ or an ‘optimist’. Should they pick up enough points to finish outside of the bottom two relegation places, he’ll be satisfied with that, which is why Saturday’s win – which knocked back one of their main rivals in the bottom four – was so crucial.

Worthing’s huge 53-22 win away at Camberley keeps them 12 points above Maids in eighth. With 10 matches to play, catching them or any of the teams in the top eight, will be tough, but another win at home to Bracknell on Saturday might just shift the landscape.

“If we can pick up two wins from this run of three matches (against Hammersmith, Bracknell and then Camberley) it would be huge and, of course, three wins from three would change the landscape,” he said.

“But I’m looking at things as a realist rather than a pessimist or an optimist.

“We could pull somebody else in the dogfight, but the reality is, as things stand in front of us now, there are four teams of which two are getting automatically relegated.

“Anything we get out of Saturday with points attached to it, is a positive. How many we get depends on how positive a day it is. But we’ll be trying to win the game against a big rival of ours because that’s part of the fun of playing sport. Derby days can be great days.”