Heathfield Colts suffer first loss in 2 years

Heathfield Colts travelled to Crowborough for this Sussex Colts Cup semi-final match with 11 of the 23-man squad unavailable through injury, DofE or some other reason. The match squad also comprised 3 U16 players, a 3-year “retired” player and 1 who is to undergo shoulder surgery in the next few days. This was definitely “all hands to the pump”.

Crowborough kicked off into the fairly strong wind and sleety rain and immediately showed Heathfield that they meant business. Some fairly robust and aggressive contact early on ensued with Crows Tom Nichol at 7 (quite probably the MoM), and their 6 out muscling Heathfield in many of the one-to-one exchanges.

An initially even scrum suffered a major loss when Alex Borg had to leave the field after 5 minutes with an ankle injury. This allowed Crow to generally have the edge at the scrum although the lineout was Heathfields (often uncontested) and the breakdown was probably just about 50-50.

After 7 minutes, Crow gave away a penalty for persistently diving over at rucks and Harry Reilly slotted to take an early lead. Crow replied almost immediately with their own 3 points for a similar offence from the kick off.

However, what was to be the defining moment of the match occurred after 15 minutes when a Crow attack was finished off superbly when the 10 chipped the onrushing defence and Crows Nichol won the race to the bouncing ball to dot down an unconverted try right by the corner flag.

Heathfield knew they had a battle on their hands but by the same token knew that their line was breached by a moment of excellence in an otherwise evenly contested match.

Some other notable points in the half were a yellow card to Crow for a professional foul (trip) and a difficult penalty miss from Reilly

Half Time: Heathfield down 3 – 8.

The 2nd half started with a few positional changes – Reilly and Henry Jolliffe swapped positions as did Tim Sills and Chester Duff to try and change things in the backs. Indeed, these changes had an immediate impact with the Heathfield backline threatening every time they got the ball.

Heathfield had the better of the 2nd half but spent a lot of the early stages trying to get out of their own half. Crow seemed to be either playing a dangerous game of sitting on their lead or were just unable to mount much of an attacking threat but they rarely looked like their backs would break the Heathfield line with another excellent defensive performance from Fergus Diplock and strong tackling from the forwards.

Heathfield made a number of great attempts at scoring with Sills, Jolliffe, Freddy Jones and Reilly going close in quick succession, only for some brilliant last ditch tackling from Crow preventing certain tries. Heathfield crossed the line a couple of times as well during this period only for the ball to be held up. Indeed Heathfield did absolutely everything bar score in this half and in the end Crowborough deserved the win for the way they defended in what was a very entertaining and well contested match.

Quite unusually for matches at this level, the last score of the match occurred 15 minutes into the 1st half but it led to a great game to watch with a lot of good humoured "banter" between the supporters!

Heathfield were just lacking that little extra in terms of pace or vision or bulk and aggression that would have made the difference to the result of this match. Good as Heathfield played, Crow were simply better on the day.

So, congratulations go to Crowborough who now go on to play Pulborough (yes Pulborough beat Brighton in the other semi-final!!!) in the Sussex Colts Cup at East Grinstead in May.

Full Time: Heathfield lose 3 – 8.

PS: A big thank you to the U16 players Miles Geldart and Chester Duff and to our newly enrolled colt – Charlie Price and also a really big thank you to Gabriel Davies who came out of a 3 year “retirement”. All these players took up our desperate call for players and put in excellent performances. Also a big thank you to James Higgins who even with a shoulder operation due in the next few days made himself available for the bench!

Team: Adam Davies, Alex Borg, Charlie Price, Henry Ross, Jack Smith, Max Ellery, Isaac Brown, Jamie Wardle, Kieran Burdett, Henry Jolliffe, Chester Duff, Fergus Diplock, Tim Sills, Freddy Jones, Harry
Reilly, James Higgins, Miles Geldart, Gabriel Davies.