A bright morning, but a chill east wind, greeted Heathfield on their arrival at Edenbridge for this league match. The two sides had met in a friendly fixture at the same venue earlier in the season with Heathfield victorious on that occasion, but the home side had also shown then some glimpses of the rugby of which they were capable.
Edenbridge started brightly. A series of drives took then down the pitch away from the clubhouse end, with Heathfield conceding a string of penalties at the ruck or for off-side on the way. However, the tackling of the visitors was impressive and enough to repel this determined ‘Bridge effort and, when they managed to secure good possession, Heathfield looked the more dangerous side – a break from their dynamic hooker, George Hayter, soon released left-wing Jon Beaton to stride home and touch down behind the posts. Tom Reilly knocked over the conversion to make the scoreline 0-7.
The rest of the half was a fairly even affair: the jinking runs of Edenbridge’s fly-half, along with some powerful runs from their big forwards, tended to be evened out by the calm control of Tom Reilly at stand-off, the weaving darts of Finn Scott-Taggart inside him which created a ripple of panic in opposition ranks whenever he set off with the ball, and the hard, sometimes unseen, work of Heathfield’s back row where the reliable Jack Flint held everything together. In the scrum, it was Heathfield who generally had the edge, with an impressive performance from the front row. Towards the end of the half, Heathfield worked their way to a scoring position in the left-hand corner. A short tap penalty saw Jack Durnell held up just shot of the line by brave Edenbridge tackling but, from the ensuing ruck, Dan Newman took a superb line from a short pass to crash over for an unconverted try. 12-0 at half-time.
The second half saw a similar pattern to that of the first. Clever play from hand and by boot by fly-half Reilly put the opposition into their own left-hand corner from where the wind made it nigh impossible to escape for some time. The visitors, though, still didn’t seem to be quite on the same wavelength as the referee in the interpretation of the laws at the breakdown and this, along with some determined play by the home side got ‘Bridge out of that particular hole. However, Cameron Reader, who had a fine overall match in both defence and attack, showed to the coaches that somebody does pay attention to their learned advice in training by taking a beautiful straight line from a pop by Scott-Taggart in midfield to gallop under the posts from half-way. Reilly converted to make it 19-0.
Thereafter, the match became somewhat scrappy. A nasty-looking back injury to Heathfield lock Freddie McKeough rightly got the attention it required, and the final 10 minutes of the match were subsequently played out on the pitch nearby. Heathfield again demonstrated the depth of their squad with replacements coming on and making a difference in the latter stages. Almost the final act of the match was a passing move in which both backs and forwards were involved to give Stan Campbell a route, gratefully received, to the corner. Final score 24-0, although it is probably fair to say that Edenbridge deserved rather more from the game for their efforts.