Horsham RUFC coach salutes ruthless champions Maidstone

Horsham Rugby Club were full of praise for RFU London South East 3 champions Maidstone after being on the end of a 95-12 mauling.
By The Newsroom
Published 4th Mar 2013, 10:16 BST

Coach Nick Stocker saluted the ‘dynamic’ play of Horsham’s hosts, but pointed to positives in Horsham’s performance.

He said: “We were clearly beaten by the better side. I want to congratulate Maidstone who are worthy champions of our league and it is important to be magnanimous both in victory and defeat. They played a great game, took their opportunities well and converted the chances they created. I am pleased that we were competitive throughout with our scrum and our line-out good. We got a good stream of possession, and on occasions put good phases together, particularly in the second half. We cannot however complain about the result. They were bigger, stronger and more dynamic than us.”

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Horsham’s defence held out for the first 11 minutes until Jason Smith evaded Sam Bell’s tackle to go over in the right hand corner. Bell made amends to stop a certain try only minutes later before Maidstone stretched the Green and Whites defence for outside-centre Mark Dorman to go over for the first of his four tries.

Horsham narrowed the deficit when Tyler Aitken won the race to touch down following a hack through after a high tackle on skipper Matt Brown, and Will Bell kicked a difficult conversion.

Maidstone then demonstrated the ruthless power, pace and finishing of a top side with further tries from Willie Brown (4), Ben Williams (2), James Davies, Lee Evans and Josh Pankhurst.

Horsham battled gamely until the end when in the 80th minute quick ball was generated and spun left for Jonny Ordidge to score a consolation try in the corner.