Arms leave St Francis looking for miracles...

After a useful win at Horsham last week it was going to be another step up as we headed to Crawley for our first league fixture of the 2013/14 season.

There were some last minute changes to the squad for the day as it became clear that our mercurial skipper Jez Stewart had injured himself in training on Thursday by doing an impression of a tackle pad in-front of Mr Hodson, Andy Whatley and Rich Addy were also casualties from the previous week On a plus side we gained both pace and bulk in the respective shapes of JaJa Barr and the monolith that is Fatty Laker.

Norfolk kicked off into the wind and it became clear what the Saints game plan was to be. Some very direct running resulted in us conceding a soft try within 3 minutes. The conversion was added from in=front of posts. This simple action was all the Norfolk required to wake up and play. The next 55 minutes was a terrific display of hard nosed defence and attacking rugby. Tim Laker scored the 1st try of the game and duly converted this, he then added two penalties to his tally and we were only 20 minutes into the game with a 13-7 lead.
Paul Boyo Williams then scored next after some slick handling, sadly Tim was unable to convert.
St Francis then came back at us with another try, this too was unconverted and the score was sat at 19-12 in our favour.
Half time arrived and a few changes were made to the line up. The game plan from here was to throw "the kitchen sink" at them and secure the win... The next 20 minutes then saw tries from Dan, Matt Harley and Dan again with Tim converting one of these taking is out to a comfortable 35-12 lead. From here St Francis would need a radical change in fortunes or a miracle! and for some reason we almost let them have one in the shape of 2 tries and a conversion bringing them to within 11 points and a score of 35-24.
Thankfully our defence realigned and we cruised the last 10 minutes looking for the last score of the game. Unfortunately the final whistle cam first.
All in all a very good game with one or two momentary lapses in concentration. If we can build on the many positives and drop the handling errors we will probably show as the team to beat in our division?

We will see St. Francis again soon at Wiston in the Sussex Plate 1st round.
No game next week, but off to Chichester on 28 September.

I almost forgot... Tim Laker scored 15 points. I'm trying to find someone who he hasn't told?

Keep well and see you soon.