Watton travelled to Lakenham Hewett as underdogs in the Norfolk Plate Final but showed what can be achieved with the right attitude and a togetherness that has not been witnessed at the club for many years.

Playing with the elements in the first half Watton had to endure an early period of Lakenham pressure but from their first incursion into the hosts half they demonstrated their potential as full back Jock danced around the home sides defence to open the scoring and then converted his own try from the touch line to post a 7 – 0 lead.

Not surprisingly Lakenham responded immediately but could not break through the red and black defence and had to settle for a penalty to reduce the deficit to 7 – 3.

As is often the case in such close encounters much of the play was centred around the forward battle and from a line out in the Lakenham 22 a text book catch and drive saw Chris Tilley steal the ball from the youthful Dancer and the rest of the pack drove him over the line and Watton were 12 – 3 ahead.

The remainder of the half saw Lakenham's larger forwards dominate the loose play with some strong mauling which resulted in a good try from their second row and in spite of loosing their hooker for 10 minutes for some minor indiscretion they scored a similar try to Watton's from a well rehearsed line out drive and went into the break with a 13 – 12 lead.

Surely with the wind in their favour Lakenham would kick into the Watton half and exert pressure from their forwards. The Watton pack however had other ideas and found their best performance of the season to keep the home side pinned in their own half for long periods. When a penalty was awarded five metres out Watton declined to kick for goal and a short offload to Big Kev saw the Lakenham line breached by his awesome power and shortly after Jock added a penalty to restore a 20 – 13 lead to the visitors.

To their credit Lakenham fought back in style and possibly as befitting this superb game of end to end rugby scored a fine try when their full back broke free and showed a lightening turn of speed to score in the corner and bring Lakenham to within two points.

Incredibly the drama was not over and with less than five minutes remaining some indecision following a line out gave the home side a penalty opportunity that they converted for a 21 – 20 lead. Watton had one chance to respond and pressure from the restart forced Lakenham to concede a line out and fly half Ansell capped a fine performance when he broke the first tackle and drove forward a further 10 metres before forcing the hosts to concede a penalty.