PJF Opens League Account

In working hard to get a foothold and break the hosts down, we were soon rewarded as debutant centre, Olly Tidd, broke through the line to feed his partner Ruairi Campbell-Carson. In turn the centre freed his supporting fullback Gary O’Brien who crossed to score a try. This settled us down and soon the tempo was set as we began to dominate the set pieces and re-cycled quick ball allowing the backs to unsettle their counterparts. Soon after and in his trademark manner, winger Nick Owen collected a pass and from 20 yards out ran straight and hard to keep the scoreboard ticking over. Charlie Fisher slotted the conversion and added a penalty later in the half to give us a 15-0 half time lead.

The second half saw us falter a bit as we let the decisions to disallow several tries, affect us. Tidd, Nick O and Tors (twice) all had legitimate scores nullified. This disheartened us as we lost our shape and relied on individual passages of play to carry us through the remainder of the game. Our defence held up for a while limiting Gravesend to 2 penalties. However Gravesend’s previous five week’s of fully competitive pre-season rugby stood them in good stead as they almost took the points from this game in the final minutes through a well taken try.

It was too little too late for Gravesend and we must take heart from this good away win. Only hard work in training on Tuesday & Thursday will ensure that our journey to Deal & Betteshanger next week is as successful.