Catastrophic spell against Wimbledon sees Maidenhead slip into bottom two

Maidenhead's Drew Prince in action against Jersey. Photo: Paul Morgan

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Maidenhead managed to scrap back for a losing bonus point in Saturday’s 38-26 defeat at rivals Wimbledon, but the defeat leaves them in a perilous position in the bottom two automatic relegation places.

Maids have just six games left to dig themselves out of the bottom two to avoid automatic relegation this season and - on paper at least - they have a tougher run in than their rivals, Wimbledon, Camberley and bottom club Hammersmith & Fulham.

Head coach David Mobbs-Smith accepts Saturday’s defeat at Wimbledon - which leaves Maids four points adrift of their rivals - is a major setback to their hopes of staying up. But he still believes they have the quality and character to get the results needed from their final six games to finish above two of Wimbledon, Camberley and Hammersmith.

Camberley are also now two points above Maids after claiming an unexpected 38-38 home draw with high-flying CS Stags on Saturday.

Much of the damage was done either side of the half-time interval on Saturday. Trailing 12-5 after a very even first period, Maids had the chance to finish the half by kicking the ball out of touch. 

That kick fell short and was picked up by Wimbledon who then scored to make it 19-5, with Maids also being reduced to 14 players in the build-up.

The catastrophic end to the half was then followed by an even more catastrophic start to the second half, where Maids conceded two further tries and saw another of their players sinbinned leaving them 31-5 down with only 13 players on the field.

That they managed to fight back and win the second half 21-19 to claim a bonus point should be applauded but their hopes of victory evaporated either side of the half-time whistle.

Maids try scorers on the day were Josh Moscardini, Tom Marland (2) and Will Hibberdine.

 Mobbs-Smith said: “The point keeps us in the fight, but it’s not ideal because our two main opponents Camberley and Wimbledon got three points and five points. It wasn’t the worst-case scenario, but it certainly wasn’t the best.

It was 12-5 on the half-time whistle and we didn’t exit the ball off the pitch. They carried on playing, we tried to get the ball back from them, we got a yellow card trying to do that.

“They then scored from there against 14 players. Then just after half-time we made another mistake from the kick-off and they scored from that. They scored 14 points and then three or four minutes later they scored another try and the game was gone. From that moment on, we got back into the game and got on top of them a little bit.  We made errors just before and just after half-time that shouldn’t have been made and they really hurt us. We were chasing the game from that moment and weren’t completely out of it.

“At 31-19, we thought we might be able to get close to them, but they pulled away again with another breakaway try. At 38-26 we had enough time to score twice, 10 minutes or so, but we couldn’t even get one try to get another bonus point.

With about 20 minutes to go in the game, they were worried. We had the conditions behind us, and we were doing a lot of the attacking. We just couldn’t score. Their defence was marginally better than ours, they just didn’t make the mistakes that we made, and we also had two yellow cards in that game. One of our tries came when we only had 13 players on the pitch.

“We had a real chance of getting back at them, but we just gave them too big a lead through our errors, which is the story of our seasons. We played some magnificent rugby, but we made a couple of silly errors and then we’re chasing them all the time.

“We went in at half-time 19-5 down instead of 12-5. And then straight from the kick-off, a player made an error and gifted them possession and they scored again. The game disappeared for us in that period. They got three tries in that period when we had less players on the pitch. We were chasing them after that, but the damage was done by then.”