Heathfield Colts 22 - 27 Tonbridge Juddians Colts

January 2nd, Happy New Year!

This match was organised as an early year cobweb-duster-offer and also a chance for players to run off any largesse of the past few weeks! Heathfields warm-up did not bode well with fuzzy heads, dropped passes and general lethargy from many of the players!

TJ kicked off playing into the wind and very strong sunshine and immediately put pressure on Heathfield. This early pressure led to a penalty in front of the posts that TJ declined and ran instead. Solid Heathfield defending stopped the initial threat but another penalty was this time taken and converted.

Heathfield won the ball from a turn-over after the restart and immediately moved the ball down the line. Toby Warren looped and supported the move well and was able to receive the final pass to beat the covering defence to score a very good (unconverted) try in the corner taking the score to 5 – 3. Sadly, this was to be about the only time good hands were to prevail in the match!

A further 10 minutes of play ensued with TJ generally better at the breakdown and quicker around the field. Their support play was also considerably better that Heathfields and it was only the cussedness of 4 or 5 players carrying the Heathfield side that prevented TJ running away with the match at this point. However, from loose play and a few pick and drives from TJ, they managed to isolate their scrum half against 3 Heathfield forwards who were single handedly driven back 3 meters for the scrum half to score in the corner! Yea that was 1 scrum half against 3 Heathfield forwards! The try went unconverted leaving TJ ahead 5 – 8.

The remainder of the half actually saw some parity for Heathfield with Harry Reilly converting one penalty taking the score to 8 – 8 and missing 2 further moderately difficult penalties. At least we understood that this was going to be a tight match requiring all the points on offer.

The half drew to a close with TJ making a good break and actually being clean through when their final pass was knocked-on with little opposition in front of them.

Half Time: Heathfield draw 8 – 8

Heathfield turned round to face the wind and sun for the 2nd half with very little else changing.

TJ scored a converted try after 9 minutes through some good work by TJ hounding Heathfield into errors near their own tryline before Travis Parsons scored from one of the few half decent bouts of play from Heathfield a few minutes later. Heathfield won a scrum and the subsequent breakdowns to finally get a series of phases going. This allowed the backs to move the ball wide to good effect but the ball went to ground with Parsons on hand to pick the ball off his toes at pace to score a converted try taking the score to 15 – 15.

Heathfield were still amazingly right in the mix but they lost concentration momentarily in midfield after 20 minutes and TJ scorched away to score a solo try which went unconverted.

Unfortunately, TJ scored again with a converted try this time due to a series of very poor tackling from multiple players allowing a relatively soft try close to the posts. TJ now had a considerable lead (in the context of the match) at 15 – 27.

However, credit to the Heathfield players in that they kept going to the end and managed to score another converted try, this time from Alex Borg. A rare rumble from the Heathfield forwards with only a few minutes of the game left allowed Borg to burst through from 5 meters. As we know, very little stops him when he sees the whitewash and so it proved again when some half-hearted tackling from TJ failed to prevent him from dotting down. That was a very good repost from Borg in reply to being (I think) unfairly yellow-carded earlier in the half when a TJ player stormed in from 10 m away to smash Borg in the back, about 10 seconds after the whistle had gone!

So, the year opening match ends with a disappointing loss but hopefully the players that showed up at least blew the cobwebs away from the festive period!

Full Time: Heathfield lose 22 – 27.

Team: Smith, Borg, Ellery, Benson, Vidler, Kent, Welch, Bayly, Sandford, Reilly, Hastings, Warren, Lloyd, Parsons, Koops, Burdett, T