By Elliott Josypenko
January 16 2005

Bees versus London Welsh never really looked like being a classic given the two teams struggling attack compared with two fairly okay defences and by the end of the game, classic, it definitely wasn't. A fairly poor game to watch for neutrals, but I'm sure that both sets of fans were checking their fingernails by the end.
Bees were dreadful in the first half. I haven't seen a worse half of rugby from the Bees in a long time. Lineouts were poorly executed, backs passing was poor, kicking from hand from Tim Walsh was poor and his place kicking was terrible. In fact he missed one from on the twenty two in front of the goal. The London Welsh kicker in contrast was having a wonderful first half clearing the ball absolutely miles from hand keeping Bees pinned in their own twenty-two. He then hit two penalties, one from nearly 45 yards out, and Bees were lucky to go in at halftime with nil points!

It wasn't just Walshy that was playing badly. Everyone in the team was playing badly. Rucking was poor with players going in without looking and booting the ball forwards to the opposition players. Offsides were regular occurances as were knock-ons and Bees were really struggling to attack. Defence, however was fairly solid and Bees managed to prevent any leakages over their try line. Another positive was the pick and drive moves. Although used slightly excessively at times, I thought that these gained some good yards and some of the rolling off moves were good. I can see this being used more.

By contrast, Solihull were having a whale of a time in Gosforth and regular reports from the North East showed how Solihull eventually tore the former greats apart (41-12?) to enter the draw for the quarter finals of the Powergen Vase. That will be a wonderful day at Twickenham if Solihull could make it through to the final and Bees could sneak past Bedford making it a double celebration.

Back at Sharmans Cross Road, things had improved slightly for the Bees with the introduction of Jim "Babyface" Thorp, Matt Miles, Paul Knight and Luke Narraway (I think) and the performance had far more urgency about it with passes being more clinical, rucking better, and lineouts perfect as earlier in the season.

Just after the break centre Shaun Woof broke through Dylan Pugh's tackle and the ball was recycled quickly for Walshy to slice through under the posts. The Australian's conversion gave Bees a one point lead.

With just five minutes to go Jim Jenner stole a London Welsh lineout within their twenty two and the ball was passed to youngster Ryan Lamb who threw a beauty of a pass to Dave Knight who ran in under the posts making it 14-6. By this time, Nick Baxter had received his second yellow in two home games to make the game interesting.

This score would have been quite harsh on London Welsh who at this stage would have gone away with nothing, but they made the game interesting when a poor clearance kick from Paul Knight was charged down and Adam Bidwell scampered over. Pugh converted the try to make it 14-13.

Considering the remaining injury time, Bees were stupid and gifted a good kicker a fairly simple opportunity to win the game. Luckily for Bees, he fluffed his attempt and the full time whistle was blown.