Forest made the long journey to Oakham with a squad depleted by illness and injury. With only 14 fit players and a severe shortage of forwards, Forest had to borrow an Oakham prop and Isaac made his debut at number 8. Against this backdrop, and with gale force winds making passing difficult, the win for Forest against a quality Oakham team was a major achievement.

For the first half, Forest were playing into the strong wind and progress was difficult. Despite a number of opportunities, the lads failed to show the required accuracy as passes kept hitting the ground rather than the intended player. A frustrating day to be a winger as they barely got a touch. Liam picked up a yellow after an incident in which he appeared to be more sinned against than sinner but he would later have the last laugh by scoring the only try of the match.
The try came after a long period of Forest pressure. Jackson made a typical sniping break but was stopped close to the line. From the resulting ruck Isaac stepped in to the scrum half role and spun a quick pass out to Patrick who shipped it on to Liam to score in the corner.
With the near hurricane blowing into his face, the conversion was impossible for Will so the half time score was just 5-0.

In the second half Oakham came back strongly but the superb Forest defence held firm. I wasn’t checking the time and it was blooming cold but it did feel liked the longest half of rugby ever. I suspect we were well into Fergietime when Will’s well struck penalty put the game out of reach Oakham’s reach and soon after the ref blew the final whistle and we were all able to go back inside and get warm.

Congrats to the players for a good win against a very good team in very tricky conditions.