Our final game of last season playing on the 'aggregate' at Battersea Ironsides who robbed us in the last minute of a seemingly sure victory was still ringing in our ears on Sunday. The boys took their places with this in mind and kicked off with a Harvey Cutmore special, finding touch perfectly which put us on the front foot straight away. In a fairly even contest for 50 minutes of play we came out deservedly the winners by outplaying and adapting our game.

The usual first five minute 'sparring' of each other resulted in the opposition starting to test our loose ball play, where we were admittedly, slightly inconsistent with our resistance which they exploited and made us work doubly hard in regaining possession. But regain we did and adapt and learn and fight back.

From a Warly won ruck and new phase of play the ball was expertly recycled into the back line allowing Chris Lipczynski to slot a try over the far side in the 11th minute. Going onto to score a 2nd, which despite not being converted also was more than made up for by Harvey with a place kicked penalty for the 3 point margin that we much needed. The 2 soft tries conceded were down to some ineffectual tackling and our not buddying up sufficiently as pod in defence.

The opposition number eight was a very canny and skilled player who carried a lot of their momentum, while their forwards challenged us up front all game but of great note was the superb effort from the Warly front 3 working extremely well as a unit in the set piece winning scrums, a few against the head but also being 1st to the breakdown and making good use of some lazy ball. Battersea's backs handling was a lot weaker and their mistakes afforded us chances and we were then better able to exploit this linking up our midfield and the wings.

Areas to improve upon are our hunger in arriving at the loose in great numbers, buddying up in pods to support one another in the tackle but above all this week of note was the body position when going into the opposition at contact. Too much high carrying ball, resulted in a lot of unnecessary lost ball.

That said the boys did exceptionally well and really shone in the last third of the game when they dug in and manned up against a fairly well drilled team with some good pockets of talent amongst them.

Man of the match this week goes to Luca Fassio who put in tackle after tackle without let up.

Mentions
Matthew Barnett plugged away with his usual determination, steady in the loose, a rock in the set piece.
Paddy Mallows for sniffing out loose ball that no one else wants and making it available.
Thomas Sullivan for eager observation at the scrum or line making use of anything that comes near his hands.
Both he and brother Liam Sullivan tackled with guts and focus.
Harvey Cutmore for his boot and never being scared to strike hard at the opposition, no matter what their size.

All the boys were up for it, a good win and now a few weeks training and development before the final crunch against Chipstead.

Well done, proud coaches again..!