Heath V Eastbourne

After everyone had attended a moving two minutes silence for the centenary of the end of the First World War, the sun came out to shine on what had been a fairly miserable morning. The sun also seemed to light up the team as they proceeded to produce one of their best performances of the season.

In recent games, the disorganisation caused by team drop outs and unavailability had been cited as reason for a poor performance or defeat. Today appeared to be going the same way as, along with our current long term injuries, four of the squad withdrew yesterday, one this morning and one got injured during warm up. Consequently, a healthy looking squad of 24 was reduced to 18 available players and initial expectations against a team from the league above were low.

How wrong these concerns proved to be! From the kick off, Haywards Heath were immediately on the offensive and it wasn’t long before Liam Macaulay spotted an opening on the blind side of a ruck to scamper round under the posts for the first try which was converted by William Goodwin. This was quickly followed up with a well taken score by Tom Foat in the same corner and then Christian Streater in the opposite corner. Christian's try came via his own deft little chip over the top, which was caught by Daniel Grant at pace, who then fed it back to Christian who’d come up in support. This was again converted by William Goodwin to take the score to 19-0. However, there was still time for James Watson to break a few tackles and sprint in for the fourth score to make it 24-0 at half time and so cap an excellent first half performance for such a disrupted team.

Eastbourne made a couple of changes at half time and immediately looked threatening from the kick off. Indeed, the next ten minutes or so were all Eastbourne with Heath having to defend resolutely. In previous games, a try or two would have been leaked against such determined attack but not on this occasion with everyone in the team making their tackles, including a superb joint cover tackle from Mitchell Day and Kai Jutson to stop what seemed a certain try in the corner.

Heath eventually lifted the siege with man of the match, Kai Jutson sprinting in from about 40 metres after breaking a few tackles. Mitchell Day then squeezed in the corner for a well taken sixth try and the scoring was capped off by James Watson for his second try to leave the final score at 43-0.

This was a quite superb squad performance with every one of the 18 boys that participated today playing their part, leaving very little that could be criticised. However, if one was being particularly picky then some tries were left out on the park when we were in the red zone due to impatience or wrong options and kicks to touch from penalties need to find touch. However, nothing should detract from this fine effort and all of the boys now need to take this momentum and focus into next week’s league game against Crowborough.