Oak got back to winning ways yesterday with a hard fought win against a strong Stratford team, who have strengthen their squad after finishing 3rd last season. The game was nip and tack throughout and after Oak took the lead with a penalty, Stratford came back to level, Oak then went ahead with another penalty only for Stratford to hit back again. As oak pressed forward for their first win of the season, tempers started boiling over in part to some strange decisions by the ref causing both sets of players to be amazed and confused and which resulted in a yellow card for Stratford then followed 2 yellow cards for Oak with Oak then playing the final 18 minutes with 14 men, this however seemed to annoyed Oak and they kept the pressure on and were rewarded with a driving maul to score the only try of the game and the conversion gave Oak a 13-6 lead with 2 minutes left to play. While there was scoring opportunities twice the ball being held up over the line and 3 or 4 one man breaks for Oak, good defence by Stratford and lack of support runners denied the scoring opportunity. Stratford always looked dangerous in attack and may rue the decision of the ref to call back play when oak were deemed offside and having cleared out the ball to free a 4 v 2 overlap the ref blow his whistle to bring play back, this about 2 minutes before Oak went the end to score their try, however, on balance Oak did enough to earn the win.
Next game is Friday night at Home to Sutton Coldfield 8pm kick off.
