H&B open with narrow win

ANOTHER successful Sussex Division One season appears a realistic possibility for Hastings & Bexhill following an encouraging opening day 22-20 win at Seaford.

Although weakened by the loss of two key players over the summer, the William Parker Sports College-based club proved they haven't lost the art of winning, timing their charge just right to hit the front for the first and decisive time in the final 10 minutes.

And there was a sense of irony about the manner of victory too. Seaford firstly led 10-0 and subsequently 17-5 but, just as they almost pulled last season's Sussex Shield final out of the fire with a barnstorming second half rally, it was H&B's turn to provide a closing flourish.

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"I didn't feel that we were going to lose at any point during the match even when we were behind," said club spokesman Peter Knight.

A sentiment that owed in no small measure to his side enjoying the benefit of a strong, unseasonal wind during the second half when "we got it together a little bit more".

And that was largely due to the "dominant" performance of the forwards whom, in conditions more akin to November than mid-September, were always going to hold the key to the outcome.

It was a score through the backs, however, that initiated the riposte shortly before half time when fly-half David Northen touched down after staunch ball-winning work from the forwards to trim the visitors' arrears to 17-10.

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The same player crossed the whitewash again following a scrum in the second half but H&B were still trailing going into the closing stages when Morgan & Lamplugh man of the match Danny Ralph, acting as a stand-in scrum-half in the absence of Matt Harboard, scored and captain courageous Neil Redman defied the Seaford gales to slot the all-important conversion.

Ralph also registered H&B's first points of the new campaign when he found a gap quite wide to round off an opportunistic backs' move mid-way through the first half.

Although not among the scorers, Ben Davies, whose accurate line-out throwing on a day hookers simply dread, was among the leading lights from a side whose starting line-up contained just six players who began the Kent/Sussex promotion play-off defeat to Old Elthamians back in April.