Old Brentwood 00 - 49 H&D II

This week saw Harwich & Dovercourt second string travel to Old Brentwood’s RUFC for their inaugural game in the Essex 2XV cup, which also saw the debut of club new recruit Oliver Sergison starting at flanker.

The game started with Harwich forwards dominating the set piece and the backline attacking with real venom which soon saw the sea-sider’s reap their reward when stand-in No. 8 Josh Leeks opened his account for the afternoon thanks to the effort of the Harwich pack, driving the Old Brentwood scrum over their own line providing the armchair from which Leeks was just to dot the ball down for and easy try.

The tough weather condition affected both sides playing styles but favoured Harwich as they kept the pressure eventually finding themselves territorial advantage close to the try line with another scrum to contest which gave the team and Leeks the opportunity to produce a carbon copy of their earlier try.

Harwich were reduced to fourteen men as Leek’s turned from hero to bad boy as he receiving a yellow card earning him a ten minutes break on the side line but with spirit’s high the remaining boy’s dug deep and worked tirelessly thwarting all advances on their try line to maintain their clean sheet.

The Harwich old guard enjoyed flexing their muscles with big hits coming from Mark Sanders-Crook, Guy Williams, Josh Edwards and Simon Pitham which combined with the strong running displayed by Rob Kemp, Danny Horrigan and Craig Wilson enabled the visitors to dominate proceedings enabling old head Joe Francis to demonstrate his skills with some quick thinking and a turn of pace soon added another try to extend and fortify a strong lead.

The visitor continued to harvest the tries from their efforts with contributions from the two Wings Adam Palmer and man of the match Ryan Boyne with the conversion points added from the trusty boot of in-form Craig Wilson.

All in all it was a good display for H & D 2XV and Captain Oly Bray and the Coaching team were full of praise for the all-round performance which demonstrated a desire to play open and attacking rugby whilst maintaining a rock solid defence.

This week Harwich & Dovercourt 1 XV play Witham at Low Road whilst the 2 XV travel on the road to Aldeburgh & Thorpeness