EG Men 1
Matches
Sat 05 Oct 2019  ·  Sussex 1
EAST GRINSTEAD RFC
EG Men 1
Tries: O Adams, A Moffatt, A Maynard, D Arnold, B BeardConversions: O Adams (4)Penalties: O Adams (3)Yellow Carded: D Arnold
42
26
Seaford
EG1 HAVE FIRST HOME GAME OF THE SEASON

EG1 HAVE FIRST HOME GAME OF THE SEASON

Luke Stewart6 Oct 2019 - 12:11
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https://www.egrfc.com/teams/14

Seaford RFC travel to EG looking to maintain their position at top of the league

FINALLY, after 3 games back to back on the road, EG1 get their first run out at Saint Hill. This game was HUGE, it was the first opportunity for many of the fans to witness all the hard work which has gone into developing the senior set up over the past 6 months, building on the work from last season. The boys did not want to disappoint. On top of this, Seaford were currently sat at the top of the league after game week 3 and the EG players wanted to put down a marker as the team to beat this year.

Oli Billin’s started the game, kicking high, allowing the EG defence to blitz, putting pressure on the Seaford players from the off which forced Seaford to knock the ball on. Seaford have a strong, powerful pack and EG knew their scrums would be the toughest they’ve faced so far this season. Alex Maynard packed down at loose head prop for the first time this season after being promoted from playing blind side flanker (much more fun to be had in the front row). Seaford applied a lot of pressure, as they would do for the full 80 minutes, and although EG were slightly on the back foot, hooker, Mark Oliver was able to swipe the ball cleanly to the back for scrum half Ali Schofield. After EG maintained possession over a number of phases, Mark Oliver found himself in space, receiving the ball on the right wing, charging on making good yards, but doubting his own pace, he offloaded to Oli Adams to touch down in the corner. After the game, Mark Oliver insisted “I could have made it”, unfortunately, due to technical issues the camera wasn’t rolling at the time, so we will never know. After Adams scored in the corner, he made his first kick of the game challenging for himself, and unfortunately pushed the kick just wide.

EG have a smaller, more mobile pack than a lot of the teams in the league, allowing them to tire teams out and spread defences. However, Seaford utilised their size and after a line out and a couple of carries, set up a rolling maul and fought their way over the line. Seaford fly half narrowly misses the conversion by hitting the post, which ended up being his only miss of the game.

Grinstead looked to play as much as possible in Seaford’s 22, maintaining pressure and patience, holding onto possession where possible, or putting Seaford under pressure to force the mistakes. This paid off when Seaford, in their own 22 attempted a box kick clearance, however, Centre Ali Moffat charged the kick down and touched down just next to the posts. This time Adams made easy work of the kick, slotting it through the uprights.

Both teams were extremely passionate about winning this fixture, unfortunately for both teams at times this resulted in lowering standards of discipline, especially around the breakdown. For much of the first half however the penalties were against Seaford and during the first half, Adams successfully kicked two penalties to add to his score.

On his first team debut, Alex Maynard used his upper body strength to rip Seaford’s ball carrier on our 22 and managed miraculously to score a try at an even SLOWER pace than Busby had the previous week against Haywards Heath 2s. Adam’s certainly had his kicking boots on as he successfully sailed a ball bang down the middle of the uprights.

Half Time: EG 25 – 5 Seaford

EG start with a bang in the second half, learning from previous week’s games where they had been slow out of the blocks in the second half. After receiving the kick off and making a number of carries in the forwards, the ball got released to the backs and Moffat broke away from the Seaford defence, just meters from the line an impending Seaford defender closed Moffat down, but with Dan Arnold on his shoulder, Moffat tipped to Arnold who dotted down over the line.

In the second half Seaford looked to play to their strengths. After struggling to defend against G’s quick backs, they looked to maintain as much possession as possible and wear down our defence by forwards carrying and mauling. Seaford earned three tries in the second half by mauling and consistently crashing up around the fringes. G’s got sucked into this style of play and frustrations built on both sides. After Seaford were penalised in the first half for follow play in the breakdown, ‘Letter of the Law Arnold’ found himself on the receiving end of a yellow card after Seaford were getting away with foul play that the ref was unable to see.

Although G’s found themselves caught in an arm wrestle with Seaford for a lot of the second half, hooker replacement Tom Kiernan played a crucial role in obtaining G’s 10 points by winning a penalty at the breakdown with some swift jackling which Adams converted, followed by setting up Ben Beard to score one of his signature 50 meter tries, boshing players and dancing around others to score.

Full Time: 42 – 26

Seaford made the game very challenging, they know their strengths and the played to them well, however G’s forwards held out well in defence and the backs did a superb job at creating and exploiting holes in the Seaford defence to earn the boys 42 points. Ben Beard earned himself Man of the Match for his all-round attacking threat. More importantly however, we need to move on to our DotD. Mr Sean Morgan, a front row forward who has been playing longer than most of our startling line up has been alive, decided that, three scrums into the game, he didn’t fancy playing tight head prop anymore and instead made debutante Alex Maynard switch sides with him. Morgan clearly making the most of Jambos absence who would not have entertained such outrageous behaviour.

Match details

Match date

Sat 05 Oct 2019

Kickoff

15:00

Meet time

13:30

Attendance

100

Competition

Sussex 1

League position

1
East Grinstead
6
Seaford
Team overview
Further reading

Team Sponsors

Shirt Sponsor - Spartan UK
Shirt Sponsor - Tough Mudder