As the Chinnor Gourmet Club arrived at Clifton there were three talking points on the agenda:

• the state of the pitch - fantastic
• would Chinnor win at Clifton for the first time?
• how did the Gourmet Club drink 2 bottles of gin before arriving?

The cold, but sunny afternoon bode well for a open, running game against 2 teams who have scored plenty of points so far in this campaign.

After an early penalty to Chinnor stroked over by the confident Colver, the young Clifton side put pressure on the Chinnor defence and scored their first of 8 tries out wide after 5 minutes.

Chinnor responded quickly with the first of a few purple patches with tries from Sam Stoop and Henry Colver with successful conversions to boot. After 21 minutes, this had Chinnor 17 - 7 ahead and looking reasonably comfortable.

The final 10 minutes to half time resulted in 3 tries; 2 to Clifton, 1 to Chinnor and a half time score of 17-22 in Chinnor's favour. Supporters at half time were wondering what the score in this game would be by the end.

The first 20 minutes of the second half delivered 27 points to Chinnor with tries by Matt Goode (2) and Liam Gilbert duly converted by the ever accurate Henry Colver. With only 1 try by Clifton in the same time, Chinnor were looking for an emphatic win with a score of 22 - 49 with 20 minutes to go.

And then the wheels seemed to come off the Chinnor train; the next 20 minutes gave 28 points to Clifton with only a penalty in response by Chinnor. Try after try were scored by Clifton and Chinnor looked like a deer in the headlights. Oxygen was brought out for the older Chinnor supporters to keep them going (Gin was made available for George...... again!) as the game looked as if it was falling away from Chinnor.

The most bizarre incident happened at the end of time, but before the referee blew the whistle. All that Chinnor needed to do was win the line-out (which they did), get the ball to the backs (which they did) and then kick the ball out (which they didn't! - it was thrown out!). The referee awarded a penalty to Clifton who looking at the score made the right decision to kick for 3 points and get the losing bonus point.

Clifton's Ben Roberts (who was excellent all day) took the kick which was short; the ball bounced and while the whole of the Chinnor team watched the ball bounce. Clifton with their never say die attitude had chased the ball and caught it for a try under the posts which was converted.

The reality of this game was that without Henry Colver's boot Chinnor would have lost as they were outscored on tries 8 to 6. The seemingly unstructured and harum-scarum approach of the Clifton team caused Chinnor real problems in defence. The Chinnor pack were dominant for many phases of the game and for some reason they decided to play the game the way Clifton wanted to rather than the Chinnor way. This created opportunities which Clifton capitalised on.

Overall a fantastic game for the impartial observer and as everyone commented after the game rugby was the winner. Chinnor will need to work on defensive accuracy for next weeks game against Taunton, but it should be remembered 5 points away from home is important and who would have thought that the team would have been in 7th place in the table at this stage of the season.