Isle of Wight 19-26 United Services Portsmouth
The Isle of Wight were narrowly defeated by a title-challenging United Services side boasting two former Isle of Wight players. IW were forced into a few last minute changes due to illness, forcing the withdrawal of hooker Ian Bennett, with Fountain Inn man of the match Ricky Keyes moving across the scrum to cover.
IW managed to seize the early advantage. Pressure allowed co-captain Andrew Brown to drive over the line from 5 yards out, Keyes converting. USP managed to reply after a mistake from the Islanders at the restart, evening up the game. But strong driving play from the hosts culminated in Ryan Tulloch crashing over from five yards, though this was soon answered in kind as USP scored under the posts.
Harri Jones Evans was yellow carded for a tackle without the ball from the restart, forcing IW to tighten up the game, whilst reduced to 14 men. They made light of their disadvantage, as centre Luke Blackman flopped over from a metre. Keyes again added the points and at half time the Island were up 19-14 and looking in control.
The second half was a dogged affair. With the momentum changing in the visitors’ favour, strong defence from Tom Marriott, Evan Toms and Dave Blackman kept the USP backline at bay. A couple of key changes in the USP pack gave them the ascendancy in the scrum. This new found scrum pressure led to a penalty and the resulting lineout led to a try from the driving maul. Subsequently, after sustained pressure in the Island's 22 USP scored a controversial try to seal the win with what looked like a knock on over the line.
With only ten minutes remaining the Island put a large amount of pressure on the USP line but even with a number of penalties awarded were unable to get over the line. The game ended with the Island losing by 7 points and disappointed that they only achieved a bonus point from a solid performance. Next the IW 1st XV travel to Portsmouth 2s before the Christmas break.
IW: D Blackman, Toms, Webster, L Blackman, Jones-Evans, Marriott, Augustus, Newnham, Keyes, Blackburn, Pudney, Brown, T Groves, Tulloch, Wallace, Ward.
IW II 0-59 Lymington Mariners
An impressive Lymington side, challenging for Hampshire Three honours, put the IW second team to the sword at Wootton Rec.
Again forced to field with players out of position, the home side faced the wind in the first half and found themselves mostly on the defensive, but at times did not have the rearguard intensity required to keep out their powerful opponents. After an early try, IW were over the Lymington line but Jevon Dry was held up, and soon Lymington’s strong driving play was rewarded with two further seven-pointers. Trailing 21-0 and just getting a foothold in the game, IW’s luck ran out as they lost senior players Sam McQueen, Gary Warvill and Kieran Leahy to injuries in quick succession, and were left with even more players completely out of position. Lymington scored once more to lead 28-0 at the break.
Given their ill luck and the patchwork nature of their team, IW deserve huge credit for their second half display. Though they conceded a similar number of points in the second half as the first, Lymington had to work much harder for their scores and upped their game considerably, playing some great rugby in the difficult conditions. There were strong performances by Fountain Inn man of the match Dan Bishop at prop and Josh Lavell who made some crunching tackles, while replacements Colin Stretch and Frank O’Keeffe made telling impacts in their first game of rugby for many years. In the end, the score did not reflect the efforts of the IW team, though there was no questioning the prowess of Lymington.
IW: Leahy ©, Rolfe, M Joyce, Dry, Wynyard-Wright, Warvill, Blyth, D Bishop, McQueen, S Lavell, A Groves, J Bishop, Jones, N Joyce, Cameron. Replacements: Stretch, J Lavell, O’Keeffe.
