Colder than a witch’s nipple

It was so cold! And us spectators were all covered up and weren’t even the ones in shorts! After two minutes Ryan Maguire got a boot in his face and looked a bit like the Danish flag. Our own First Aider was occupied elsewhere, but thanks to Brighton’s who was alert Ryan was soon back on. Last game’s man of the match and his team mates couldn’t stop the whirlwind that hit us and soon we were behind 17-0.

However, we have been behind by more in the past and still won the game and it looked like the same could happen again when it was suddenly Green Army that pushed forward. An intentional knock-on resulted in a sin bin and suddenly we were playing against only 14 and really got them rattled.

At this point Brighton’s coach was screaming and jumping up and down and changed their captain together with a few more players. That didn’t seem to help as the second half started with us occupying their 22 and when it was finally our turn to get a penalty Jordan Bell kicked us on the score board, and at this point it really did look like we could get more than two converted tries and win the game.

But either we lost concentration or Brighton regained theirs because suddenly we were hit again with quality rugby, and at the end of the game the Australian Open Tennis final seemed more interesting. All our subs got a good run in the end, but why Max Day didn’t get to play too remains a mystery.

No – the final score of 44-3 does not reflect fully the difference between the two teams yet a formidable man of the match performance from hooker Tom Hamblet couldn’t stop a superb Brighton. We are a team of 20 players on a good day, Brighton have 52 players who have all either played for or are playing for Harlequins, and our boys will have learnt how to punish every small mistake from the opposition, what good rugby can look like at this age and take this with them for the rest of the season as well as when going to Colts after the summer.

Brighton and Worthing are too good and we will now be playing for 3rd in League 1. But how good does that actually sound and smell and feel when we get that spot?!