Ipswich battle hard but fall to defeat at Wanstead

It was the visitors who scored first after seven minutes, with former Ipswich Colts centre Luke Uru dashing past a somewhat flat-footed Wanstead defence to score in the corner following some good work by Ben Grimwood.

Ipswich dominated the early exchanges. On offence Corey Button and Grimwood escaped the clutches of what appeared a sluggish Wanstead midfield on several occasions allowing debutant winger Tyler Beales some early opportunities. Carlton Littlechild switched to centre this week looked an authoritative figure for Ipswich.

The Ipswich pressing defence forced several errors as the Herons tried to build a response.

Wanstead kicked the ball deep into the Ipswich ‘22’ and secured a line-out. The ball moved across the field left to right with some committed Ipswich defence keeping the home side out.

Sadly for Ipswich, as Wanstead continued in possession and went through their phases, the ball switched to the other side and a half-break in midfield saw a smart offload to Wanstead’s hooker allowing a simple try and conversion to make it 7-5.

A penalty further added to their advantage, 10-5 at the break.

After the interval, a handling error resulted in Wanstead retrieving the ball and in a flash they were up the field and scoring to make it 15-5.

A rejuvenated Ipswich then mounted a series of attacks as the home side started to tire.

Their best effort saw Button and Jake Steward combining to go very close up the left touch line, whilst several other half-breaks, similarly, could not be converted to points.

Ipswich, despite their efforts, simply could not convert possession into points and so the match turned in to something of an arm-wrestle with the score remaining locked at 15-5 until the referee started a lengthy period of injury time in which Wanstead crossed for two late tries.