Saturday Old Reigaitian 1st XV hosted Battersea Ironside who pre pandemic had been promoted from London 2 along with Farnham and have now established themselves as a Level 6 Club.
ORs impressive start to the season had faltered recently with a draw with Old Colfeians and then last week’s lost to Dartfordians.
With a bumper crowd and over 130 people for the pre match lunch with the Club’s increasingly successful Woman \ Girl’s section including the National Champion U15 (now U16) Age Group and last season’s U18 Girls where six of that squad are now studying at Brunel University on a Rugby Scholarship.
Reigatian got off to the worse possible start with Battersea showing they have a useful back line with plenty of Pace with quickly recycled ball from the kick off they moved the ball wide got outside the home defensive and were 0-7 up before the lunch had finished their deserts!
The Home side looked stunned and weren’t playing with any kind of desire they have shown earlier in the season with missed tackles and generally standing off while Battersea played all the Rugby.
Another two tries and the home side were 0-26 down within 26 minutes. This looked like a potential cricket score if the home side didn’t start to find some form.
Their luck didn’t get any better when Lucas Overtoom received a yellow card for a tip tackle and would not return until the second half.
Max Coyle who has been out injured the last five weeks had been given the go ahead to bench for this game Friday lunch time. Max is not only a quality player, but his return seemed to gel the Team. With a man down ORs started to play with a purpose and after a number of phases No 8 Oli Brooks was found on the wing and showed great strength broke a number of tackles to score in the corner with Overtoom still in the bin the kick was unsuccessful, but the home side were on the score sheet.
5-26 at Half Time.
Second half was much more the team we had seen in the early rounds of the league playing with direction and purpose. After 15 minutes of the second half Max Coyle scored under the posts with Overtoom back on the pitch the extras were added 12-26. Battersea were still proving to be a hard team to break down and secured a kickable penalty to stretch the lead to 12-29. However their dominance of the first third of the match had disappeared.
Tom Woodford had looked dangerous every time he had got the ball and finally in the 25th minute of the half he had enough space to use his pace to score again Overtoom was successful with the kick 19-29.
As the home side pushed to try and get a losing bonus point and a try scoring bonus point unfortunately Battersea managed to push back score a try of their own to give them a 19-34 win. Not the result Old Reigatian wanted but it could easily have been a lot worse, and the players showed a lot of heart to force their way back into that game. There are a lot of positives to focus on as they now have a week’s rest before they travel to Guildford.
1. Toby Collister 2. Ciaran Nestor 3. Mike Layzell 4. Tom Bestwick 5. Reilly Frankllin-Talbot © 6. Rob Williamson 7. Jonny Long 8. Oli Brooks 9. Ed Forsyth 10. Harry Serjeant 11. Harrison Mitchell 12. Lucas Overtoom 13. Gareth Stephens 14. Finn Coyle 15. Tom Woodford 16. Harry Plowman 17. Max Coyle 18. Rob Cheal
