Ellingham and Ringwood 22 - New Milton 16

We welcomed local rivals New Milton to the Raymond Brown Memorial Ground on Saturday, for what was to be a tightly fought contest in Hampshire Counties Division 1. The ground was bathed in much needed sunshine after the deluge in the previous week that had made training impossible for both sides.

We put ourselves under pressure early in the game when we failed to deal with a clearance kick and New Milton took control of the first seven minutes of the game. This led to us conceding a penalty in front of their posts, which New Milton's inside centre Lewis Waugh kicked for a three-point lead. We continued to struggle to get out of our half and New Milton, sensing that their opposition had not got to grips with the game, linked up well to score a try, when their flanker Lee Thomas crashed over. Lewis Waugh was able to kick the conversion to open up a deserved ten point lead.

This finally stirred us into action and we started to piece some good passages of play together. We applied a lot of pressure to New Milton's try line and the visitors gave away four penalties in a row. From the final one our number eight Lewis Nicholls forced his way over to give us our first try of the game and our full back Chris Frost kicked the conversion. There were no further scores in the first half, but our flanker Tyler Grant was given a yellow card for killing the ball close to the try line, so we had to work hard to stifle New Milton's attack and leave us trailing 7-10 at the break.

Both our coach Alan Steel and captain and scrum half Sammy Veneroso provided stirring half team talks to inspire us to turn things around. Chris Hancock also came on for Josh Berry in the front row. Unfortunately the speech's must have fallen on deaf ears, as our discipline continued to let us down and we conceded a number of penalties. New Milton's Lewis Waugh took advantage and kicked two penalties to extend their lead to 7-16.

Again faced with adversity and not wanting to lose to our local rivals, we sprang into action. First of all, our full back Chris Frost kicked a penalty to reduce the deficit. Then leading from the front, our scrum half and captain Sammy Veneroso dived over for a try after some sustained efforts by his forwards who valiantly tried to breach the visitors try line. His brother Tommy Veneroso, who had come on in a straight swap for Harry Wescott at fly half, kicked the conversion and it was good to have him back on the park after being out all season with a long term injury.

We then started to dominate and after some fine link up play between our forwards and back line, our right wing Chris Seaby sped down the flank to score our third try of the game in the corner, but unfortunately Tommy Veneroso was unable to kick the conversion from out wide. New Milton did not give up and again our discipline nearly let us down by conceding penalties in our own half, but despite the visitor's efforts, they could not pull back the deficit and our defence was strong enough to withhold the late pressure. This secured our first home win of the season and a double over New Milton after our previous 21-27 victory at the Ashley Recreation Ground in September.