Heathfield 5 Hastings & Bexhill 7

H&B knew that this would be a tough fixture after the close home win against a solid Heathfield side.

Heathfield started strongly carrying the ball into the H&B half and for the first ten minutes H&B falied to gain control of the ball and allowed the home side to gain the advantage
 
Poor tackling and repeated penalties allowed Heathfield to run in a try after a quick tap from a penalty to lead 5-0.
H&B then started to gain confidence after a number of quickly taken penalties by Andy Dalton and Alex Nichols pushed the Heathfield defence into their own half and then despite the loss of prop John Joe Dawes to a rib injury the H&B pack started to dominate and ended the first half camped on the Heathfield line but unable to cross for a score despite strong runs by Aidey Mahoney and Robbie Simmons.

The second half continued much as the end of the first half but eventually the forwards realised that H&B wingers Dan Suggett and Will Howard Smith had the beating of the Heathfield back line if only they could secure the ball for them.

Unfortunately for H&B the forwards entered into 30 minutes of possession but rarely released the superior H&B back-line and it looked as though possession was not going to turn into points.

Berwick Smith came on at scrum half for Peter Eames and there was an immediate change of the point of attack with the backs receiving more ball and centre Tom Grellier, playing his last game for H&B, went close on two occasions. Tom left the field with 15 minutes to go for George O'Reilly to make his debut for H&B on the wing.
With 10 minutes left on the clock H&B had a scrum ten metres out and fly half Ben Arnold drove over close to the posts for a try which he converted himself for H&B to at last take the lead 5- 7. Heathfield tried to take the game to H&B but time ran out for the home side.

Skipper Pete Mahoney said ' we knew this would be a hard game and it certainly was with Heathfield defending superbly given that H&B had 80% of possession. I would have expected more points but this is a well deserved win after the Xmas break and sets us up well for the remaining league games'