A great League win v Brighton

By James Gordon

The Lions playing with confidence once more

It has been a while since we have seen a Lions win against the top 3 of Brighton, Chichester or Haywards Heath but finally we got there! A well-deserved victory which comes at the end of a run of good performances from the Lions.
We knew that Brighton had one main threat, they have one very strong and quick player that scores most if their tries, but that did not help us stop him from scoring two early tries; he broke through tackles and scored from distance on two occasions within the first 5 mins, the boys heads went down and it looked like we were going to see a repeat of recent games. However slowly Horsham started to get into the game with some nice strong running. The strong wind conditions however did not suit our natural passing style and it took us a while to adapt with two or three chances going begging through handling errors. The forwards began to fire though, and we started to see some dominance with players like James the Dark and Ross turning the ball over. Some sustained pressure resulted in Finlay C scoring a try towards the end of the first half. Brighton scored once more through their usual source and we went into half time 15 – 5 down.
We changed our approach at half time bringing on the direct runners of Jonnie, Rhys and Harry, and moving away from our expansive game by playing a simple and direct style. The boys responded with a superb 10 minute display of pace and accuracy that resulted in 5 unanswered tries. Tales were up and the teamwork on display was impressive with some galloping runs from the likes of Morgan, Finlay R, Finlay C and Dan. Some runs from the base by our forwards drew in the defence and some nice distribution began to find the space out wide. Brighton kept things interesting by scoring 2 more (same player again!), but the boys held out by finishing the game the stronger with more tries, this time Finlay C and Morgan starting to find gaps in the middle.
A very good display and I can start to see the believe come back into this team. When the Lions play with confidence very few teams will beat us.