Vigo on brink of promotion

4:04pm Tuesday 1st April 2008

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Vigo 15-3 Sheppey

AFTER suffering a heavy defeat to Vigo earlier in the season, Sheppey changed their team radically and posed all sorts of problems for the villagers on Saturday.

The way Vigo managed to overcome these problems is a sign of their growing maturity and confidence and makes this Saturday's clash with third-placed Cranbrook a mouth-watering prospect.

Victory for either side may well be enough to earn promotion to Kent One.

Sheppey were obviously fired up for this game and smashed into Vigo's midfield, mainly through their beefy centres who knew the pace of Vigo's threes needed to be nullified.

Dave Wootton, especially, proved to be a handful and enjoyed some early success.

All credit must go to Vigo's Tom Emmitt, who eventually managed to shackle the big centre, before unleashing some rapier like thrusts of his own in the latter stages.

An early penalty by Bradley Box gave Sheppey the lead as Vigo were hurled backwards by Sheppey's ferocious opening.

Vigo levelled through Dan Norton's reliable boot when Sheppey transgressed before the hosts began to settle down.

Even so, another Wootton charge gave Box the opportunity to regain the lead for the visitors.

To everyone's disbelief, his kick sailed wide and Vigo were off the hook.

The belief began to grow in the home side and they took the fight back to the islanders.

Sheppey tried to put pace on the ball, moving it quickly out of contact as they stuck to their game plan.

It was a pretty effective game plan, although some methods incensed the large crowd as the battle raged.

Referee Kevin Willis was able to control the game and a yellow card was shown for one piece of detected skulduggery.

It is said a yellow card is generally worth seven points and so it proved as Emmitt sped through the hole in Sheppey's defence left by the banishment and Norton converted for a narrow half-time lead.

Sheppey cleverly changed their game plan for the second half with the highly experienced Peter King moving into stand off.

However, before they could really absorb the changes, Sheppey were hit with a sucker punch.

A hopeful punt forward by the visitors looked as if it were rolling into touch.

Top scorer Jamie Caton, however, was more alert than the Sheppey chasers, scooped up the ball and shot off to the line from fully 70m.

Anticipating a lineout, Sheppey's defence were wrong-footed as Caton's extreme pace gave him his 22nd try of the season in only 18 games.

Sheppey now had to play catch up but for all of King's prompting, they came up against a solid defence.

Only a brilliant cover tackle by Box on the flying Caton prevented a further try and Vigo quite happily ran the clock down with some punishing pick and drives.