Ravens stumble but aren't down

A tough day for the Ravens as they met New Milton at home in preparation for next weeks Cup Semi Final. A balanced game until New Milton kicked over the Ravens defence and their winger was able to win the ball and run in the first try of the game and were allowed to get under the posts. Ravens replied quickly with try from Harry Rabjohn who drove on from the 22m to beat several attempted tackles and score, but he couldn't make the conversion. The game continued to be a real contest with Ravens pack dominant in the set piece but the No8 and Scrum Half combination of New Milton began to dominate breakdowns. Ravens lost Aaron Spiteri off with a broken collar bone and Euan Archbold with a back spasm. Handling errors by Ravens gave up the ball and when New Milton went wide the defence wasn't good enough with large gaps and poor attempts at tackles, they scored to lead 12 - 5 at half time.
The second half began as a real contest and when Ben Wheeler crashed over Ravens pulled it back to 12-10, but New Milton weren't out of the game and again handling errors gave up the ball to often. A fumbled catch allowed New Milton to kick through and the ball beat the covering players efforts; it then bounced perfectly for the chaser who touched down under the posts to give New Milton a 19-10 lead. ravens struggled to regain composure and whilst they to went back to the game and were pressing on a least two more occasions they just couldn't finish the drives off and coughed the ball up. Tackled players need to put the ball back away from the tacklers to create space and the opposition must be driven off to retain the ball.
Lot's to address at training on Wednesday before next weeks big game. If both Ravens and New Milton win their Semi's it should be a great Cup Final when they next meet. Both teams selected the oppositions scrum half as man of the match with it going to George Smith from Ravens and Lucca from New Milton.