Shoreham fall to Steyning

This was a momentous day
The last match before the new Steyning RFC branded kit arrives
The first Adur derby as Steyning RFC

It did not disappoint...

Steyning started well establishing a dominant scrum, and lineout.
Matt (Mooey) Hodson continued his aggressive running from the base of the scrum to score first on 5 min.
Alex Pell-Stevens set a trend in his off the tee kicking by missing the conversion. His out of hand boot (on the other hand) was on fire for the whole game gaining ground at every opportunity.

Nathan Roberts scored next with a powerful drive from close out, I am sure there were about 5 Shoreham players hanging from him by the time he reached the line.
The conversion, as hinted, did not make the mark.

Another sequence of play that saw Alex kicking us into a position to attack the Shoreham line, the pack secure lineout only for Shoreham to infringe.
A quick tap and go from Iain (Bosch) White caught the Shoreham defense on the back foot and unable to stop Iain from dotting down out wide. Alex had one last attempt at converting the try without success.

Alex continued a great game at fly-half with a well constructed move that saw space open for him to run into and through token tackles to score.
Alex had now passed the kicking duties to Grant Wright, without luck

All this and only at midway point of the first half.

Shoreham then showed they had a real cutting edge when they let loose their open side flanker from well within their own half, a powerful run saw him beat several tackle attempts, before he completed a sprint to the line. Shoreham 7 - Steyning 15

The first half ended with the move of the match
The forward pack drove forcibly into Shoreham territory, before Jez Stewart noticing the drive was losing momentum, fed Alex.
Alex ran a loop with the Shoreham defense pressing fast, quick hands presented Alex with the opportunity to launch a miss pass to Jon Harley.
The full back picked his line, an outside swerve, that left him with a one-on-one close to the line.
Jon used his considerable bulk (NOT), to beat the last defender and touch down right in the corner.
The missed conversion by Grant left the half time score at Shoreham 7 - Steyning 25.

The second half started well with Nathan again showing his power to bulldoze over for his second of the match.
At last...Grant slotted the conversion.

A raft of substitutions left a slightly scrappy period, but managed to empty the Steyning bench and build the squad skills, a great luxury to have so early in the season.
A low point was seeing hat trick scorer from last week, Jez going off injured and a doubt for next week.

Mooey came close to scoring a second late on in the game, but was adjudged to have put a team mate accidentally offside while in the act of scoring, a cruel but fair decision.

MoM was Grant, not just for kicking the only conversion, but also his work around the pitch. He seem ed to be everywhere at times.
DoD went to Jean-Paul Badenhorst, who after just coming on, lead a demonstration of what not to do with the new law changes, and to be honest most of the old laws, all this in his first 5 min on the pitch - you have to love the enthusiasm!

Final Score Shoreham 7 - Steyning RFC 32