Crawley bow out of Junior Vase with thrilling defeat

Crawley lost their longstanding home record with a narrow 21-20 defeat in a national competition.
JPCT 280913 S13391265x RUGBY: Pulborough v Crawley at Freelands -photo by Steve CobbJPCT 280913 S13391265x RUGBY: Pulborough v Crawley at Freelands -photo by Steve Cobb
JPCT 280913 S13391265x RUGBY: Pulborough v Crawley at Freelands -photo by Steve Cobb

Hastings and Bexhill arrived at Willoughby Fields on Saturday with a big, powerful side and high expectations. Crawley made a number of changes from the previous week due to injuries, with another young and relatively inexperienced side taking the field.

They made full use of this weight advantage and opened the scoring with a converted try.

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However Crawley did have the upper hand in the scrums and this started to turn the game in their favour as the visitors were penalised heavily by the referee.

Following one of these penalties, Alf Spurgeon found touch deep in the opposition half. Crawley won the lineout through Luke Attew, and some slick passing down the back line saw Ben Westphal-Reed score in the corner.

The crowd could tell this was going to be a tight game and the young Crawley team were playing some good rugby against bigger and more experienced opposition.

Crawley played with the breeze in the second half and immediately took advantage from the kick-off, Harry Mansfield won the ball and from the ensuing ruck Spurgeon skipped around two defenders to score.

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Unfortunately the conversion was missed. Two minutes after this, Spurgeon undid all his previous good work and was sin-binned for a late tackle.

This allowed the visitors back into the game and they scored another try making good use of their numerical advantage.

Crawley hit back, through another wonderful backs move. Matt Lane-Miller outpaced two defenders from 40 meters out.

The home side again missed the conversion, in fact their kicking cost them the game missing all four attempts at goal.

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Luke Wilson then added to his growing try tally with another superb effort to take the score to 20-14 and the gap had opened.

However with five minutes left on the clock, Hastings took advantage of some defensive frailties from the home side and finally took back the lead, converting their late try to win by a point.

Crawley: Cockram, Westphal-Reed, Salle,L Wilson, Moffatt, Spurgeon, Mitchell: Riley, Garry, Eaton, Attew, Harding, Turner, Manfield, Blythman. Chapman, Wilson, Dean, Lane–Miller.

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