Harwich hosted Halstead Templars at their low road home this weekend for the second pre season warm up game of the year.
From the start both sides showed some ring rust as they built into their structures and game plans but even so, there was plenty of flowing rugby in display.

With both sets of forwards vying for supremacy, it was the Harwich backs that started to make some ground in the midfield with some very strong carries coming from Adam eldridge in particular. This clearly fired up the Halstead team who met fire with fire and produced some strong runs themselves!

Halstead we're the first to score with a well worked moved that ended under the posts after some quick recycling of the ball along the wing.
This spurred Harwich into action with forwards such as Josh 'the mighty head' leeks, captain for the day, and robert 'the stick' edgar upping the intensity.

With large amounts of pressure being added in both attack and defence, eldridge was able to intercept the ball on two occasions, both leading to tries for the home team. The final score of the half came from the captain leeks as he charged through a scrappy like out to fall over the line with the ball.

The second half continued in similar fashion to the first with both teams making good turn overs and playing some great attacking rugby.
Halstead we're relentless in their pursuit of the ball and caused the home side a lot of trouble in both attack and defence, but it was the home side that were able to convert more points with a superb run from winger Andrew Sterry.

Harwich had loaned a couple of players to Halstead to provide some useful subs and this saw the return of the man, the myth, the legend, Mark Sanders-crook to step into the Halstead scrum and school his younger adoring student Clark Simpson on the dark arts of scrummaging.
A massive thank you goes out to Halstead for making the journey and putting on a great game with special thanks to all of the lads who helped out with numbers. Especially Tom Bunker who was relentless in taking hit after hit.

Man of the match went to Josh Eldridge, the best Eldridge in Harwich, after a strong game from start to finish.

Next week Harwich travel to Colchester for the next of their pre season games.

Report by Robert Wood