Deja Vu

In all the years of writing match reports, I don’t think I have ever written three losing ones in a row! There is a first time for everything! In fact, I said to the boys after the match, in many ways I could copy and paste the main points of the last two matches as there were so many similarities. The big one being that we had worked our way into a winning position before throwing it away.

A bizzare start to the game wasn’t the best way to settle us in, as the Brighton drop out didn’t go 10. G’s forwards started walking for the midfield scrum, but the ball bounced on, was snaffled by the Brighton 7, spun wide for a run in on the left for a score in under 30 seconds. Another Brighton converted try followed before a hack through from Ben after a fumble by the Brighton backs, saw Stokes and Max streak up the pitch in hot persuit. Stokes pressured his winger who kicked the air, the ball popped up into Max’s arms and he powered over to score. With confidence restored, G’s started playing. Although our set piece was under real pressure from the much larger Brighton pack, the big boys again mauled beautifully and started to give our backs a platform. Training park moves saw first Max and then Marriott break the line and push deep into the 22, a couple of phases later, Marriott just reached the whitewash under the sticks to pull us even at the break. 12 all, and again, only one team in the assendancy.

But as with the last three weeks, it was all to no avail as a strong second half performance saw Brighton take the game away from us. I know we have a load of players out at the moment, but I’m certain we wouldn’t have lost any of these last three games last year with the squads we have put out. I really don’t think any of the teams we have played were better than us, and they now sit as top three in the table. We can easily charge up the ranks with a couple of wins and a bit of fire and confidence.

As I’m grumpy, there in no MOM this week, but DOTD goes to Pete Spence who brought his girfriend to watch. We found out later she had puzzled as to why she couldn’t see her hero playing. This was because she had watched the wrong game. She did however say that Hove 2’s looked pretty good!