EG 1 WIN at Home

East Grinstead 22 - 3 Seaford

After last weekend's match being postponed against Burgess Hill for unplayable conditions, the senior squads were buoyed this week by the return of injured players, including Drew King coming off the bench for the 1XV as a finisher. Additionally, with the colts having an off week in their schedule, the first team were able to benefit from the addition of two colts, Ben Beard starting on the wing and George Beet coming off the bench as front row cover.

Ben Beard made a huge name for himself on his senior debut by scoring a hat-trick within the first 22 minutes of the match. Richard Dodgson and Sam Montagu executed the roles perfectly by sucking players in in the midfield, creating space out wide and distributing well to Beard on the wing for him to run all three of his tries on the right hand wing. Despite the wet conditions and the wide angels Steven Cooke was left to kick from, Cooke successfully converted two of the conversions. Later, in the second half, Cooke kicked a penalty to earn his boot 7 points in the match.

Typically, the backs get all the glory, however the forwards were dominant, despite Seaford's main strength being their pack. In the lineouts John Peaty was a nuisance, stealing the ball on a number of occasions and the scrum was also dominant with Tom Kiernan able to hook the ball on defensive scrums multiple times thanks to the shove provided by the G's pack. In the loose, as expected, Dave Bridges, Max Dewing and Connor Leggat made some huge carries, consistently making those extra yards in contact. Defensively, Ben Tottman maintaining his incredibly high standard for tackling rates, hitting anything that moved and minimising where possible the number of tackles Cooke was left to attempt to make.

Our MoM goes to Ben Beard who not only score 3 tries in 16 minutes on his debut, also made a try saving tackle, which although was deemed illegal by the referee, prevented Seaford with walking away with a potential 7 points and limited them to only taking 3 points.

Next weekend (15th December) EG 1XV face Crawley at HOME (website is wrong - swapped pitches earlier in the season). A huge turnout is expected to cheer on the boys before their well-deserved Christmas break.