Heathfield attack fails to fire against a big Horsham side

On a beautiful sunny morning the Hurricanes took on Horsham in near perfect rugby conditions. The first 10 minutes of the game were evenly balanced with strong forward attack play by both sides. Heathfield conceded a few soft penalties for creeping offside at the breakdown and holding on too long on the ground. Horsham tried a number of set plays from the penalties and with a well worked switch, breaking through some poor tackling, their 13 strolled in under the posts. The Hurricanes lost their shape in defence after this and a second Horsham try followed shortly after. Heathfield were woken by this and put real pressure on the Horsham line. Poor handling and slow support turned the ball over a number of times but Heathfield kept Horsham pinned in their half with some good solid tackling.
The second half saw the size and weight of Horsham’s forward take its toll. Though some fresh legs on the field for Heathfield helped, we were getting beaten at the scrum and letting the opposition put too much pressure on our scrum half. We also started to turn balls over in the rucks, normally a strong point of our game. Tempers flared at a few points as frustration crept into our game. Heathfield hung on to the last 5 minutes when Horsham’s big no 8 crashed through to score in the corner. We responded well to this with a sustained period of pressure, building phases with good attacking forwards play, for our number 8 to go over in the corner but lose the ball in the final tackle.
Horsham took their chances well and we did not. We struggled in the back line as some of the boys were less familiar with the plays due to lack of time training together. We were reminded that tackling low and hard is really critical and also, that we keep our shape both in attack and in defense. With a run of league games coming up we have some work to do in training. Practice makes perfect!
It is never nice to lose, particularly a league fixture, but we need to take the lessons from the game and step up for an exciting run of fixtures over December and January.

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