Date: 10 March 2010

"Official" match report - as submitted to the press

Aldershot & Fleet 32 – Romsey II 13
Hampshire Merit Table
Sat, 16 Oct 2004

Romsey skipper Jamie Glanville was in the unusual position of travelling with a full team, including replacements, to this Hampshire Merit Table fixture and, with his charges starting well, was confident of coming away victorious.

Within the opening minutes, Romsey’s fine rucking and open play saw them camped in the hosts territory and prop Murray Palmer was desperately unlucky, having found space on the wing and crashing in over the line, to have an early try disallowed following an adjudged forward final pass from the youthful looking Andy Mott who had ably drawn the waiting defence to open the gap for his burly chum.

This seemed the catalyst to fire the home side into action; their pack waking from it’s collective slumber to take control at the scrummages. Despite heroic efforts by the front row of Palmer, Beal and Fawcett, Romsey never really managed, from then on, to obtain well controlled ball with which to feed their back line.

Away from the scrummages Romsey’s forwards competed well with some excellent rucking in the loose and domination of the line-out by newcomer Ali Nawn but still the travelling backs had little quality ball with which to “strut their stuff”.

With a surfeit of ball the home side turned their possession into points almost at will, running in tries from all angles with only half-hearted attempts to prevent them on the parts of some of the travelling defenders! Romsey’s only replies to this points onslaught were two successful penalties from the boot of fly-half Nick Creal.

In the second half, following replacements (Craig Osgerby on for his brother Paul, and Bill Nye on for Jeremy Feeham) Romsey began to settle. The forwards resolved themselves to getting ball for their back line who, when they had possession, began to show their mettle and looked far classier than their opponents.

The renewed effort and sparkling play was met by desperate defending from the home side but, eventually, Romsey were rewarded in part for the efforts. Centre Matt Boshier looked every bit like Nureyev as he danced through 3 would-be tacklers to score under the posts making the conversion a simple matter for Creal.

Romsey laid siege to the Aldershot line from then on in a desperate attempt to make amends for their failings in the first period but sadly the home defenders were equally desperate to hold them back.