Cranleigh downed by Old Wimbledonians' kicking master class

With all the rain that had fallen, it was not surprising that the game was played on a pitch which was more like glue.

The result Old Wimbledonians achieved was mainly due to their excellent place kicker converting a try and the three difficult positional penalties during the game.

From the start, Cranleigh were on the attack for the first 20 minutes with good positional kicking by Greg Cushing and Cranleigh dominating the scrums.

On 17 minutes Pierre Goodwin, playing at number 8, broke from a scrum at pace, weaving in and out and outpacing the Wimbledonians’ defence to score near the posts.

Wimbledonians were awarded a penalty two minutes later to make the score 3-7.

For most of the second half, Cranleigh had to defend in their own half. Their defence was excellent but they could not seem to get into Wimbledonians 22 to put any pressure on their opponents.

The Cranes were still dominating the scrums even though Wimbledonians went down to 14 after 18 minutes when their hooker was given a yellow card for stamping.

After 12, 30, then 36 minutes of the second half, Wimbledonians had three penalties. The first hit the upright but the others were converted from way out.

Cranleigh lost valuable possession several times during the game from their own lineouts but the effort all the team put into the game was excellent despite the result.