Stowmarket 2nds showcased their new kit sponsored by Aspalls at home to Mistley.

In a game where its always been a closely fought contest between these sides, Mistley couldn't have asked for any better of themselves. From stowmarkets point of view, we had brief spells where we were on top, but our lack of training as a team was evident.

Mistley started the game on the front foot, with their forwards making hard earnt yards, to score the first of 3 tries early on.
With a few words from captain Gavin Rudland ringing in their ears, Stowmarket decided to wake up a little bit, making their way up field but lacking that final pass needed to get on the score board. Half time came along with Stowmarket yet to get any points on the board.
Mistley came out guns blazing again in the 2nd half, but thanks to some heroic defending by the likes of Ben Cook, Alex Harrison and Ash Cook, just to name a few, we managed to hold them off, before Ali Mason showcased his sniping skills with a quick tap penalty and squeezed his way through the defence to get Stowmarkets first points, with Julian Turner hitting the conversion and shortly after adding another 3 to his tally Stowmarket started to believe that there was still a chance to end up on top of this game.
Mistley had other ideas and used there big running forwards again to their advantage before shifting the ball wide to get the next few scores.
Ali mason was again the guy to give Stowmarket a bit of belief after some big carries from Graham Wilson and Darius Scarlioli, to name a few, Stow were within inches of the try line, with Ali spotting a gap in the middle of a ruck, diving over he was just able to touch the ball down.
With the clock running down, and a win now out of the question, Stowmarket were now playing for pride, with some big tackles right across the field, Matt boulton and Ben mayes, 2 of our smaller members of the club, were tackling players twice there size. Stowmarket were able to hold Mistley off to end the game 41-15 in Mistleys favour.
Not a game to forget, but one to look at and realise were we need to improve.

Man of the match was well deserved for Darius Scarlioli