BRIGHTON UNIVERSITY 26 HASTINGS & BEXHILL 38

RUGBY is by its nature a bruising game. What’s bearable in hot blood aches painfully the following morning. So just by turning out to play a Sussex Shield game against the current holders the day after they’d faced the Kent league leaders, H&B showed grit and strength of character.

With skipper Paul Sandeman, Rod Luff and Tom Spatchurst unavailable and Ash Diedericks injured, Ben Davies, Jason Holewell, Aidy Mahoney stepped into the pack, Roger Roberts tested his damaged knees for the first time this season, and Bruce Steadman started on the wing, with Joe Umpleby, third XV captain Peter Eames and colt Calvin Crosby-Clarke on the bench.

H&B started strongly against an athletic-looking students side at Eastbourne rfc, running the ball at the defence, showing good hands and some decent footwork and winning a penalty in front of the posts. Spurning the kick, they elected to scrummage, and pushed their opponents off the ball. Turned over, H&B ran the clearance kick back, won a penalty which Kit Claughton took quickly and threw a long miss-pass to Steadman on the wing, who sidestepped through several tacklers for a try under the posts, converted by Tom Waring. 7-0.

Five minutes gone, and H&B well in control? Brighton U had other ideas.

A series of penalties conceded by H&B allowed the students to run the ball out of their own half, raising their confidence and finally, following some tired H&B defence and sluggish reactions, running in a try through their fleet-footed number 13, converted to level the score.

With a quarter of the game gone, H&B again fell foul of the referee, trying to contain busier Brighton forwards at the breakdown, and penalties again pushed them back to their line, where Brighton drove over to take a 14-7 lead.

H&B now looked second best upfront, while their backline wasn’t linking as smoothly as they had the previous day, nor dealing as assuredly with the students’ probing kicks.

A turnover at the breakdown led to a third Brighton score, and when their left wing ran the ball from a penalty, chipped over the defence and regathered the ball for a fourth try, the exuberant students were suddenly 26-7 ahead and looking rampant. With H&B’s mostly older, tireder legs unlikely to revive, the game seemed lost.

But then a quickly taken tapped penalty from H&B, followed by swift hands down the line, saw Steadman dart in for his second score, getting injured in the process. Calvin Crosby-Clarke came on for his first team debut, and the half ended with H&B on the attack again, but trailing a daunting 26-12.

The second half was a repeat of the previous day’s game - with the difference that this time H&B’s dramatic comeback won them the match.

Suddenly, H&B’s pack was miraculously revitalised. Set scrums were dominated convincingly, lineouts were monopolised - skipper Jimmy Adams claimed almost every ball, including most of Brighton’s. Ben Davies made inroads with crash ball, Jason Holewell was aggressive at the breakdown, Roger Roberts used his skills and experience to thwart Brighton’s forwards. The game turned on its head.

With the young home side no longer able to lay their hands on good ball - and their threequarters now being scythed down by an aggressive defence when they were in possession; Dillon Newell was for the second day dynamic in defence and attack - their confidence evaporated.

H&B set about clawing back the lead from the second half whistle. A purposeful set of phases carried the ball to Brighton’s tryline, Brighton managed to clear the ball, but from an H&B scrum on the 22, assured off-loading ended with Steve McManus bullocking over for a try, 26-17.

The penalty count was swinging in H&B’s favour, and from one such a Davies carry inside Brighton’s 22 allowed Piers Claughton to split the defence and touchdown, 24-26.

H&B’s tactics of keeping ball in hand and starving Brighton of possession was paying dividends, the students losing their first half composure, and another set of pick and drives and neat offloads was rewarded with a pinpoint long pass from Kit Claughton to Matt Harbord, the latter’s fine footwork sweeping him under the posts converted by Waring to take a 26-31 lead.

In the last quarter, H&B started sparing exhausted legs by chipping the ball behind Brighton. From a lineout Davies crossed the line but was held up, and from subsequent great rucking, with Aidy Mahoney driving the ball up hard, Kit Claughton stepped his tackler and ran the ball under the posts for Waring to convert, 26-38.

Defensive kicking allowed Brighton some possession at last, and they pressed in H&B’s red zone, but the defence contained them comfortably till the final whistle.

It wasn’t quite as good a second half performance as the previous day’s, but it was a remarkable show of sheer determination against all odds, and with Plumpton at home their next round game on November 5, has given H&B the hard-earned chance of a Shield run.

H&B: Roche, Davies, S McManus, Adams (c), Holewell, R McManus (Umpleby), A Mahoney, Roberts, P Claughton, K Claughton, Harbord, Campbell, Newell, Steadman (Crosby-Clarke), Waring. Sub not used: Eames.