Ellingham and Ringwood 24 - Eastleigh 8

We welcomed Eastleigh to the Raymond Brown memorial ground on Saturday for our Counties Hampshire Division 1 fixture, with us looking to continue our unbeaten record in 2024. There had been a well attended pre-match sponsors lunch, so there was a good crowd, despite the game clashing with England's first Six Nations fixture in Rome.

Eastleigh got off to the better start as a result of our indiscipline and after seven minutes their full back Aaron Barnes kicked a penalty goal to give them a three point lead. Three minutes later Eastleigh were reduced to fourteen men when one of their players committed a high tackle on our openside flanker Ted Johnson. With the extra player, we started to apply the pressure and after 16 minutes our captain and scrum half Sammy Veneroso, following some good work by his forwards, took off on one of his legendary darting runs to score under the posts. Our right wing Chris Frost was able to kick the conversion to give us a 7-3 lead.

Our hooker Pat Fraser was the next player to feel the wrath of the referee when he was shown a yellow card in the 23rd minute, followed shortly afterwards by an Eastleigh player being shown their second yellow card of the game and giving away a penalty which Chris Frost was able to kick to extend our lead. Chris Frost was having a fine half and in the 33th minute he dived over for a well worked try and he was successful with the conversion to add a further seven points. We continued to apply the pressure and when camped on Eastleigh's five metre line, pressing for our third try of the half, the referee adjudged the away team committed too many offences and awarded a penalty try to give us a 24-3 lead at half time.

Eastleigh came out strongly in the second half and in the 48th minute they scored a good try, which proved to be the last points scored in the game, as we were able to charge down Aaron Barnes conversion attempt. The rest of the game was fiercely contested, but both sides defence was immense. Our centre Chris Seaby and number 8 Lewis Nicholls were shown yellow cards towards the end of the game, but despite this, Eastleigh's were not able to breach our try line, so we were able to secure a 24-8 victory and move up to fifth place in the league.

The photographs show our lock forward Stuart Pearce applying pressure to Eastleigh's try line.