Lordswood II 27 Hastings and Bexhill III 23

The five match winning streak came to a brave end on Saturday against what can only be termed as a surprisingly strong mid table Lordswood side possibly strengthened by the lack of a first team game.

With a scrum half the size of James Haskell and his sibling at No 8 as well as a third giant at 12 it became obvious early on what their game plan would be. These 3 behemoths were given the ball at every opportunity and created massive holes in the Hastings defence, fortunately their first few forays were unsuccessful in large due to knock ons and Hastings committing 4 tacklers to one player.

Eventually the breakthrough happened and they powered through untouched to get the first score, fortunately they missed the extra points.

Never to be the ones to give up early Hastings continued to repel the opposition and win the majority of the scrums, and twice held up the opposition on the try line thanks in large to the front 5 of Brookes,Nunn,Ward,Dawes and Duggan , all of whom had massive games.

Hastings through aggressive mauling, and breaks off the back by Andy Small and Rob McManus, moved up the field and gained a penalty just outside the opposition 22 which Peter Eames slotted over to get 3 points back.

Almost immediately Lordswood scored again as their big boys broke tackles all over the field and their centre powered over, again the conversion was missed. Sensing that Lordswood were one trick ponies Hastings tried to nullify the threat by moving the ball wide as quickly as possible. It was from this passage of play that Matt Harbord collected the ball and jinked his way through 6 players to score a magnificent try, which was even applauded by the ever increasing throng of inebriated and vocal home supporters, that were also apparently all qualified referee’s!.

At 10 -8 to Lordswood  the injured Alan Duggan was replaced by the returning Pete Lawless.

Lordswood replied almost immediately via the same method as previous scores although shortly after scoring their influential no 8 was sin binned for a high tackle.

Half time came with the score 15- 8 to Lordswood.

With their key player still in the bin Hastings pushed forward and were winning all the set pieces and making ground on nearly every play.  A quick break from Rob McManus created a gap and he off-loaded to the marauding Joe Ward who scored in the corner and Eames converted to level the scores . Unfortunately Hastings were reduced to 14 men as Tim Nunn was sin binned.

Lords wood made 5 changes at this point and a mixture of their fresh legs and some tired bodies in the Hastings side enabled them to score 2 more tries via the afore mentioned players, one of which was converted to make the score 27-15.

Despite this setback Hastings refused to bow down and continuous pressure forced Lordswood in to giving away a penalty which Eames again converted to make the score 27- 18.

Even better was to follow as quick hands through the backs released outside centre Berwick Smith who broke several tackles before passing to Alex Nicholls who touched down in the corner, 27 -23 to Lordswood. Nicholls attempted to convert his own try but narrowly missed a very difficult kick.
 
With time running out Hastings threw everything at Lordswood to get the winning try, scrum half Stuart Gow was immense in attack making several breaks around the fringe but a turnover in the final minute allowed Lordswood to keep the ball until the whistle went.

Despite losing this league game we managed to pick up a losing bonus point which keeps us in 2nd place and the whole team should be extremely proud of the performance against essentially a team from 3 divisions higher.

Man of the match was Stuart Gow.

Team. Ward, Nunn, Brookes, Dawes,Duggan(Lawless) Boundary, Small, R McManus, Gow ,Eames, Bumpass, Smith, Harbord, Hirst (Ossusami) Nicholls. Sub not used McNeilly.

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