Havant II 61 - Ellingham and Ringwood 31

We travelled to Havant for a tough fixture on Saturday and the home side hosted a pre-match lunch, inviting some distinguished guests and injured players from the club to soak up the atmosphere before kick off.

Lady luck was not on our side before the game, as in the final minute of the warm up session, our full back Chris Frost pulled a muscle in his leg leaving us with just two replacements. As a result, Aaron Moritzen took Chris Frost's place in the starting line up.

Havant started the game strongly putting us under pressure, which resulted in us giving away a penalty that their scrum half Jack Phillips kicked to give them an early three point lead. We fought back and were applying pressure to the home team's five metre line, when our winger Ted Johnson, who was powering forward towards the try line, was tackled and sadly twisted his knee badly, so Sam Cushine-Palmer came on in the second row and our lock forward Tyler Grant moved out to the wing.

Havant fought back and in the ninth minute their full back Rory Penfold dived over in the corner, to give them their first try of the game, but Phillips could not kick the conversion. Despite this Phillips, who had a fine game for Havant, then ran through our defence and scored their second try, which he was able to convert and extend Havant's lead. We fought back and after some sterling work from our forwards, with several pick and go's, the ball was moved out wide to Tyler Grant to score our first try of the game, but unfortunately our fly half Tom Veneroso was unable to kick the conversion. Havant continued to apply pressure and we were reduced to 14 men when our number 8 Lewis Nicholls was shown a yellow card for not supporting his weight in the ruck. From the resulting penalty Havant scored their third try of the game which Phillips was able to convert.

We fought back with more sterling work from our forwards, who surged through the middle of the pitch and our hooker Pat Fraser scored a try that Tom Veneroso was able to convert. Havant came back strongly but the referee adjudged that our vice-captain and open side flanker Andrew Lorton had handled the ball in the ruck and we were reduced to 13 players. During this period Havant added a further three tries, two of which were converted, to leave us trailing 46-12 at half time.

We started the second half brightly with Pat Fraser scoring his second try after a powerful run, when he smashed through a number of tackles. Tom Veneroso was successful with the conversion to reduce the deficit further. Havant fought back and after some fine interchanges, their winger Josh Shaw dived over in the corner to extend Havant's lead. Not to be outdone we fought back with Pat Fraser completing his hat trick after some good work from his fellow forwards, but on this occasion Tom Veneroso was unsuccessful with the conversion. Shortly afterwards we were shown our third yellow card, when our fly half Tom Veneroso was sent to the side lines for 10 minutes and once again Havant took advantage of the numerical difference to score another try.

Despite the score line we fought hard all game and our endeavours paid off when our blindside flanker Stuart Pearce crashed over from close quarters to score our fifth try, which Tom Veneroso converted. Havant rounded off the match with their flanker Edward Milford diving over for the last try of the game and Phillips was able to convert for the additional two points. This made the final score 61-31 and we had to be satisfied with taking away an away losing bonus point and winning the second half.