St Albans continued their disappointing start to the season with defeat at the hands of Thurrock who have been a long time resident of London North 2.
free wallpaper moto-quadWith the return of Club Captain Dan Hillier to the side St Albans were confident of gaining their first points of the season and prepared for the game in a positive manner. However, the newly promoted team had a rude awakening when Thurrock started brightly and were rewarded within five minutes with a well worked try. It was from a line out 5 metres out and a catch and drive saw him go over, with the conversion just going wide of the posts. Thurrock increased their lead further shortly after the Thurrock centre went over near the post after finishing a good backs move. This time the Thurrock fly half made no mistake in adding the extra two points.
St Albans then had a good spell and played some of the best rugby seen by them this season for the remainder of the first half and had two penalty kicks at goal taken by Ed Coy in an effort to reduce the deficit but both were wide. Still St Albans kept trying but to no avail, with most threat coming from centre Shaw whose strong running forced Thurrock's defence to make some good first up tackles.
12-0 was the lead at the break and having made good improvement in the first half St Albans felt confident going into the second. Unfortunately, Thurrock began the second half in much the same fashion as the first and recorded a try shortly after the kick off with the conversion hitting the post, but Thurrock then added a penalty to take the score to 20-0.
Thurrock continued to press and played some good rugby with three further tries and a conversion.
St Albans heads went down in the last ten minutes and appeared grateful for the final whistle. They are left with a lot of analysing to do and must improve prior to their next game at home to Civil Service this Saturday to ensure their poor start to the season does not continue.