After the euphoria of the performance against Horsham, Old Reigatian travelled to New Malden on Saturday to play KCS Old Boys.
KCS hadn’t had their best start to the league campaign with only one win against Old Colfs but they are not a team to underestimate. A few selection headaches for ORs with the outstanding centre combination of Gareth Stephens and Max Coyle both being unavailable due to injury and work commitments and Scrum Half’s Harry Serjeant and Alex Skinner also not available, The was the hope that the traffic between Heathrow and New Malden was moving as Ed Forsyth raced back from his Honeymoon to play take the 9 jersey.
The game started with Ed still making his way from the Airport and Winger Harrison Mitchell moving in to the scrum half role and Joe Wills making his first 1st XV appearance for a few seasons now he is back from Uni.
The first ten minute were an even affair with the KCS player coach playing at inside centre was clearly going to be a handful as he made some bullocking runs and proved very difficult to contain. However it was the OR’s who scored first with Wills getting on the end of a number of phases to score on the right hand side with Lucas Overtoom adding the extra two points.
Sadly in the build up to the try Jack Baart who has been outstanding this season winning Man of the Match the last two weeks was left injured. After a lengthy delay moving Baart he was taken to Hospital where it was confirmed he had broken his Leg a cruel blow for such an important player for ORs. Hamish Broderick joined the team from the bench. With minutes later Ed Forsyth joined the fray and Mitchell moved back out to his normal role on the Wing with Wills making way.
KCS’s Coach continued to cause the defensive line problems and made a break midfield which he found his support and KCS were back level at 7-7.
Scores remained level until half an hour into the contest when Sam Foreman punched a whole in the home side defensive line he linked with Overtoom who found Tom Woodford outside to use his pace to establish a seven point lead going into half time.
Six minutes into the second half Lock Joe Gregson made an exceptional break and looked to be adding to his impressive points tally this season but when he was stopped short Finn Coyle was in support to score in the corner. This kick was not in range and the score stayed at 7-19 with the Reigate team needing one more try for the bonus point.
There was no change in the score until the 36th minute when KCS despite having more than their fair share of injuries scored a well worked try to put them within a score.
Reigatian’s had about ten minutes including injury time to firstly make sure they didn’t concede another level and surrender their lead or get over KCS’s line for the bonus point.
With the last move of the game the ball was moved through the Reigate teams backs to Charlie Spawforth only making his second appearance for the Club stepped two KCS defenders leaving them in his wake he then found some room to open his legs and win the race to the line. Quality try to claim all five points and keep Old Reigatian in the leading group of the top league with a 12-26 with four points separating the top five in the league. There is a rest weekend next weekend and then Gravesend at Home who are so far unbeaten so another big test of the exciting young Reigatian team.
1.Toby Collister 2. Ciaran Nestor 3. Reilly Franklin-Talbot,4.Joe Gregson, 5. Dan Grant, 6. Sam Foreman, 7.Jack Baart 8. Dan Jones 9. Harrison Mitchell, 10.Lucas Overtoom 11. Joe Wills 12. Ben Holder 13. Charlie Spawforth, 14. Finn Coyle, 15. Tom Woodford 16. Hamish Broderick 17. Ed Forsyth 18.Rob Williamson
