Colts win fractous match

Heathfield travelled to thier first away match for quite a while and turned up with 2 subs due to various other commitments and injuries.

Heathfield kicked off into a fairly strong wind and were immediately into thier stride with a fantastic display of attacking rugby. Rucks were hit hard and cleanly and the backs were moving with freedom and looking sharp. Indeed, for the first 5 minutes Heathfield looked awesome!

However, they failed to turn this total dominance into points and Hove intercepted a pass deep in thier own 22 and accelerated away with the Heathfield cover committed to attack. It was literally a last ditch covering tackle from Gareth Lloyd metres from the try-line that prevented a certan try. Heathfield recovered this position but the whole match changed from that point!

Now Hove had some belief and competed better in all phases although thier scrum was getting pummelled at every engagement. Hove also had a number of county U17 players turn up and join the match and one in particular (big centre) caused a few problems for Heathfield.

However, after 25 minutes, a scrum on half way resulted in a win against the head and Kieran Burdett scorched away beating 3 tackles in the process. He managed to offload in the final tackle to the excellently supporting Rob Flett who scored an unconverted try.

From the kickoff, a dropped ball from the usually very safe Henry Ross (one of many in this match!) resulted in a scrum to Hove. Hove attacked wide from the scrum but were stopped by the covering defence and Jamie Wardle (another excellent match from him) ripped the ball free and set Burdett away again. This time Burdett drew the covering defence and a miss pass to Jack Koops saw him scorch away handing off 3 tackles to score another unconverted try in the the corner.

Hove came back at Heathfield and right on half-time, a beautiful line from thier centre near half-way saw him cut through the defence and score an unconverted try in the corner.

In this period Jasper Wrenn, starting his first match since his ACL injury last season, came off with a "sore" knee!

Half Time: Heathfield lead 10 - 5.

With the 2nd half restarted, Heathfield's Koops suffered what looked like a dislocated knee injury and came off. Heathfield had now played both subs and already had 2 walking wounded still on the pitch with Burdett and Borg!

Hove were the first to score when they intelligently elected to kick a penalty (for some reason the refereeing decisions seemed to go against Heathfield at almost every incident in the 2nd half??) and converted taking the score to 10 - 8.

Heathfield replied 5 minutes later with thier own penalty in front of the posts maintaining the 5 point gap at 13 - 8.

After 20 minutes, Fergus Diplock was yellow carded for doing what the Hove players had been doing all match - lying over the ball and not moving away in the tackle! Funnilly enough though, this seemed to galvanise Heathfield who tried to overcome the decisions going against them and play some good attacking rugby.

During this period though, Hove took advantage of Heathfield down to 14 players with 2 of them walking wounded and scored another unconverted try talking the score to 13 - 13 with 10 minutes left to play.

Diplock returned and Heathfield closed out the match by tightening things up and attacking an obvious Hove weakness - the driving maul!

After 28 minutes and the 3rd driving maul in a row, Heathfield won a 5m lineout and drove Wardle over to score a try with Ross converting well.

Finally, with Heathfield mauling everythign and Hove not getting thier hands on the ball, Flett scored his 2nd of the match from another driving maul taking the score to a 4-try bonus point 25 - 13.

Full Time: Heathfield win 25 - 13.

Team: Golding, Borg, Ellery, Ross, Brown, Wardle, Wrenn, Flett, Burdett, Jolliffe, Sills, Diplock, Lloyd, Jones, Koops, Davies, Smith.

PS: Jack Koops sufferd tears in both ACL and MCL and also some cartiledge dammage and will be out for the rest of the season. Best wishes Jack for a 100% recovery.