Colts

Heathfield came into this match on the back of a hard fought win against Hove the previous week, but suffering from a number of injuries and unavailable players in this re-arranged fixture.

Worthing kicked off and both sides thrust and parried equally. It wasn't until the first scrum that Worthing realised that they were in for a completely differant match to the friendly earlier in the season.

Heathfield powered through in the scrum with the front row of Lewis Golding, Alex Borg and Max Ellery continuing their efforts of the previous week by causing maximum damage to the Worthing scrum. This gave Heathfield a measure of confidence and after 10 minutes this was rewarded when the Worthing forwards infringed at a ruck. Matt Barber converted to give Heathfield a deserved lead.

From the restart, Worthing powered towards the Heathfield line with some of the best phased play encountered this season. Worthing were quick, dynamic, well drilled and direct and this approach had Heathfield in a lot of trouble deep in their half. Indeed Worthing were good for the almost unopposed try they scored when excellent movement and decoy runners gave an opening to one of thier two big centres to score a converted try near the posts.

Game on as they say!

Credit to Heathfield as they came back strongly from this shock salvo from Worthing and the game settled into a fairly even pattern. Worthing were excellent in smothering the ball on the ground but great work from the Heathfield forwards meant the ball was usually kept alive.

After 26 mins., a quick tap penalty in front of the posts was taken by Rob Flett about 15m from the Worthing try-line. The ball went right, was recycled through a few phases and came back to the left hand side again to find an intact Heathfield back-line. The overlap was excellently developed allowing Joe Sandford to canter in to score. Barber failed to convert but Heathfield now just had the lead again.

Again Worthing came back strongly and scored with a well worked try from a scrum after 32 minutes. They failed to convert but the lead swung back in Worthings favour 8 - 12.

Heathfield didn't recycle well from the restart and again found themselves defending in their own half. However, stolen ball from a ruck and quick movement freed the excellent Gareth Lloyd on the blind side. Lloyd made ground and fed Jo Hastings on the wing and together they managed to retain posession long enough to pop a pass to Ellery, one of the front row marauders. Ellery broke a couple of attempted tackles and covered the remaining 20 meters with great pace to score an unconverted try. Again the lead changed hands with Heathfield going in at half-time 13 - 12 ahead.

Heathfield Lead at half time: 13 - 12.

The 2nd half started with Heathfield in good sprits and genuinly looking for an upset. However, with just 3 minutes gone, Worthing broke down the right flank with pace and precision and managed to score again right in the corner. A missed conversion attempt still meant they had the lead again 13 - 17.

Much of the play was now quite even with both teams having got the measure of each other and generally knowing from where the danger was coming. Posession and territory was fairly evenly shared, as were the missed attempts at goal for penalties from each side, and we had to wait until the 18th minute of this ding-dong encounter before the next score when Worthing again infringed at the breakdown giving Barber an easy attempt at goal. This took the score to 16 - 17 with 17 minutes to play.

Heathfield were beginning to lose players to injury, whether replaced or with reduced effectiveness, (George Bending and Lloyd the centres, Barber with a foot injury and Toby Warren with a back problem) due to the hard faught nature of the game. Worthing used this to thier advantage when they again attacked the right hand flank. However, this time a forward pass was missed by the otherwise excellent referee which allowed Worthing to sneak an excellently converted try in the corner to take a significant lead of 16 - 24 into the final 10 minutes of the match.

Unfortunately, though Heathfield played exceptionally well, the pace and physicality of the match meant they were unable to up the tempo in the final minutes and the match ended with Worthing worthy winners at 16 - 24.

Heathfield Lose: 16 - 24.

Team from: Golding, Borg, Ellery, Vater, Brown, Bayly, Warren, Flett, Burdett, Barber, Sandford, Bending, Lloyd, Faraone, Hastings, Smith, Halit, Benson, Pearce, Welch, Parsons, Jones.