Reading lost to third in the league Witney in a match in which they had plenty of territory and possession but lacked the penetrative running and speed of movement of the Witney back line which made the most of their possession.
Reading will be left rueing the fact that they did not make better use of the possession they won from scrums and line outs and did not take advantage of the positions they gained close to the Witney line on five separate occasions.
Reading started well and exerted all the early pressure winning penalties on the back of a dominant scrummage but were unable to make the pressure tell against a well organised Witney defence.
It was Witney who took the lead with their first real attack of the day beating the Reading defence with some fast interplay after the ball had been moved quickly to the wing to score a converted try.
Reading returned to the attack but after a five-metre scrum came to nothing Matt Daw took advantage of a penalty award to reduce Witney’s lead. #The rest of the half followed a pattern with Reading having plenty of possession and pressure but Witney looking likely to score whenever they moved the ball wide.
Witney added two unconverted tries both coming from slick backs’ moves to put themselves into a 17-3 lead.
Reading responded to the second of these when a good catch from Max Pepper from the kick off was quickly recycled, the ball eventually coming out to O’Regan who put in an excellently judged kick for Proctor-Searle to score in the corner to make the score 17-8.
Reading finished the half with another period of pressure but could not break down the stubborn Witney defence.
Witney achieved their try bonus point early in the second half when their left wing won a chase to score a converted try in the corner.
Reading came under pressure for most of the second half but showed lots of energy and a good scrambling defence in repulsing a number of Witney attacks.
They were undone on the hour mark by an excellently worked try by their opponents who moved the ball out quickly to create an overlap on the right wing and good inside support resulted in a try under the posts.
A similar move with ten minutes to go led to the same result and gave Witney a 38-8 lead.
Reading came back in the last five minutes to score two tries of their own. First Cunningham scored under the posts after an initial strong run from Proctor -Searle and Daw added the points.
Then from the kick off a strong run from Cunningham and some good support play set up a ruck in the Witney 22 from which Reading won a penalty.
They opted for a scrum and moved the ball wide where a deliberate knock on from a Witney player, going for an interception resulted in a penalty try making the final score 38-22.
Head coach Lee Goodall was pleased with the spirit shown in the late comeback which he said gave the team a good launching pad for an important run of games coming up.
Next week’s game is away at Shipston, one of the other teams fighting it out at the bottom of the league and the week after they play Stow currently second in the league at home.
Reading scorers:
Tries: Proctor-Searle, Cunningham, Penalty
Conversions: Daw
Penalty: Daw
Team: Alex Dorliac; Jamie Broadfoot, Alex Murray-Smith, Tom Sharp, Matt Daw; Finbar O’Regan, Nathan Wheeler; Josh Pallett, Will Proctor-Searle, Josh Nichol; Stephen Orwin, Gavin Egan; Max Pepper, Adam Wright, Ben Cunningham.
Replacements: Louie McArdle, Hunter Grayling, Sam Bowers.
Report by Peter Chidgey
