Beckenham travelled to Maidstone with high expectations. They were to leave beaten by the home side that were better able to cope with the conditions, a heavy sloping pitch and a strong biting wind. Maidstone kicked-off. Beckenham fumbled the catch. A solid scrum and two rucks later saw Maidstone go over in the left corner following straight running on the blindside and missed tackles. The try was well converted by Craig Whitehead. Despite that wake up call Beckenham took time to get into the game and remind themselves they had come to play rugby. Fortunately apart from the opening try Maidstone found it difficult to get any momentum. The game was littered with errors. The wind and the cold contrived to make the ball difficult to catch and hold. Gradually Beckenham began to get some control with the wind in their favour. With good ball supplied by the forwards the three quarters began to ask questions of the Maidstone defence. From one of these attacks Brendan Moore, inside centre, broke one tackle and dragged another defender over the line to score under the posts. Pat Wright, stand-off added the extras. Shortly after that score prop Simon Dunford left the pitch with knee injury. Glyn Roberts, who has played the best that anyone can remember at Beckenham this season, came on with instructions to speed up the game. With the pace of the game increased Beckenham began to win good ball and play in the Maidstone half. More scores looked likely. Full-back Steve Benham was next to score. He received the ball just in front of the posts. With nothing on and a phalanx of defenders in front of him he scored drop kick. The last action of the half saw the Maidstone forwards penalised for holding on just outside their 22. Pat Wright kicked the to leave the score 13:7 at half time. The second half was a mirror image of the first half. Both sides were evenly matched and nether could get real momentum going in the conditions. Early in the half Beckenham’s forwards won good possession and Moore did well to release the powerful Alex Morrill. Maidstone tackled well in midfield limiting the outside centre to half breaks which led to nothing. Maidstone had their fair share of breaks and with the wind in their favour began to take the game to Beckenham. Then the incident that changed things. The referee signalled advantage for a penalty offence. Maidstone continued the attack and Glyn Roberts made a good tackle turning his man in the process. The referee awarded the penalty. Everyone thought that would be it but the referee yellow carded the big prop who left the field bemused by the decision. In the next 10 minutes Maidstone exploited Beckenham’s lack of numbers with their pack getting the edge. They scored two well-worked but unconverted tries in the far left corner to take the score to 17:13. The confidence of the Maidstone side was evident and even with Roberts back on the pitch Beckenham were unable to take play into the Maidstone half for long enough to mount sustained attacks. This game between two evenly matched sides finished with Maidstone on the front foot and another loss for Beckenham by less than a converted try. Beckenham travel to Lewes next Saturday to play the game that was due to be played on 3rd September. Coach Simon Kift said after the game, “Difficult conditions, evenly matched side playing to win. What made the difference was the sin-binning in the second half and our naivety in dealing with the situation. Something we’ll work on.” | 
