KCS Old Boys vs Gosport & Fareham 1st XV

A hard day in the office was made harder by the loss of more players during Gosport's visit to league leaders KCS Old Boys.

Gosport & Fareham already knew the size of the task which lay ahead of them facing top of the table and undefeated team on their home pitch.

Due to injuries and non-availability the team taking up this challenge was a new one, with a lot of the 2s back line and recently recruited players being added into the side to ensure we could get a squad on the park to be competitive.

Unfortunately we did not get off to the start we wanted by conceding 3 quick tries within the first 12 minutes, however we started to settle down and began to build possession and territory through a dominant scrum and the tackling of Jimmy Wallis, Dan Turner but some big bone crunching tackles by the captain Sean Shepherd. This sparked life into the team and chances were being created, but we rushed them and were unable to convert them.

The task was made even harder when we lost Dom Holling 8 minutes before half time with a dislocated knee. Due to the nature of the injury and the unknown time for the ambulance, the referee made the decision to move the game onto another pitch.

After this change we did not react to a kick through and KCS went in for their fourth try before half time.

The squad re-grouped at half time and started the second half with a new focus, the scrum continued to dominate and applied pressure throughout, unfortunately we lost Danny Gamblin to a foot injury. Whilst we were creating opportunities we could not convert these into points, our pressure was evident as KCS were awarded a yellow card for continuous foul play. This is were they played the laws of the game to their advantage and neutralised Gosport & Fareham’s strength, the scrum. They took their largest and slowest player off and declared they had no front row replacement, so the game was played with uncontested scrums for 10 minutes, this allowed their defensive line to be set and ready as the scrum was no longer going backwards.

You can not knock the players endeavour as they continued to fight until the final whistle.
We will now use this forthcoming weekend as recovery and try and get some of the injured and walking wounded players back fit again and welcome Old Regaitian’s to Gosport Park on the 9th February.