By Sarah Tunney
April 8 2004

Manchester -v- Bees. On paper this should have been an easy victory over the already relegated Manchester. However, the game was rescued in the fourth minute of injury time by a last play try from wing Nick Baxter. The Bees started positively as they went straight into attack. Within six minutes of play and intense pressure, Terry Sigley took a line-out ball and was in the drive to score the first points of the game. The wind seamed no problem for Mark Woodrow who converted to put the visitors 0 – 7 up.
Stuart Brown was then able to put Manchester on the board with a penalty only for Woodrow to answer with a penalty of his own.

The Bees continued to dominate until Manchester got their first try in the 24th minute. Centre Isaac Richmond took a long pass after Manchester attacked in the lineout, passed through an attempted tackle to touch down and put them within two points of the Bees.

Although still putting pressure on the Manchester pack, the Bees confidence started to vanish as the game became scrappy with a lack of direction, with passing going astray.

Manchester took advantage of this with Richmond scoring his second try from a huge overlap. The home side went into half time three points up.

The Bees got back into the game five minutes after the restart with Woody getting an impressive penalty just short of the half way line.

However, Manchester continued to cause problems for the Bees after stealing the line-out ball allowing Richmond to once again score another try.

This looked to put the home team out of reach as Manchester looked to seal their second win of the season. The Bees had other ideas though and took advantage of the sin-binning of Manchester lock Matt Owen. Geoff Gregory made a very impressive break for the Bees, passing to sub Nick Baxter who touched down and saved the day.

This left Woody with a very difficult kick, which would have taken the Bees into the lead to win the game, if converted. However, this wasn’t made any easier as a couple of unsporting fans (who should have known better at there more mature age) decided to go right by where Woody was to take his kick and start shouting to put the fly half off.

Overall, a disappointing display for the Bees, the officials who failed to take control of the game and the couple of supposedly rugby fans.