Horsham RFC savour long-overdue victory over Chichester

They leapfrog Chichester to climb to sixth, their highest league position of the season. London one south is tight and competitive this year with only nine points separating fifth and tenth.

Horsham have clearly turned a corner with five wins from their past six games after a disappointing start to the season.

With the Green and Whites having secured a 32-0 lead after 60 minutes and the win all but secured, they mentally eased off and Chichester finished strongly with three tries of their own.

Horsham were on top from the off playing with an intensity that Chichester could not match. The Green and Whites forced a penalty in midfield struck by Oli Chennell, then minutes later and trusting the power of their forwards to deliver, they eschewed a kick at goal by going for the corner, and Kyle Fairs finished off a line out drive from 10 yards out converted by Chennell.

This was repeated on 29 minutes when after another penalty kick to the corner and a couple of phases, Jack Osgood used his long reach to stretch for the line to take the lead to 15-0.

From the restart Aaron Linfield put up a high ball, and following pressure from Declan Nwachukwu, Chichester spilled the ball and a wide pass from Chennell enabled Marcus Condon to outpace the defence on a diagonal run from 40 yards to score in the corner, followed by a difficult conversion slotted by Chennell.

When Chichester made a foray into the Horsham 22m area the pressure was relieved by a long clearance kick from fly-half Joe Blake, who on the stroke of half time was yellow carded for a high tackle on former Horsham player, Tom Blewitt.

The second half continued in a similar vein. The Green and Whites won lineout ball just inside the opposition half and when the maul drifted infield it created room for Nwachukwu to round his man to score in the corner. This was followed by a carbon copy try for Fairs after a driving maul.

The 32-0 scoreline appeared to galvanise Chichester who raised their game as Horsham inevitably struggled to maintain their intensity with the game apparently won. To Chichester’s credit they scored three converted tries in the final quarter, one of which resulted in a yellow card to Josh Earle for blocking, with Horsham’s only response a penalty from Chennell.

Horsham backs coach Richard Bell said: “Another excellent performance from the lads. We asked them for energy, intensity and be clinical they delivered all three.

“Our set-piece was very good which gave us a great platform to launch our attacks. Our driving lineout reaped its rewards with three well-worked tries, two for Fairsy and another for Jack.

“Dec also scored off a lineout drive down the blindside. The backline looked sharp and worked well as a unit.

“We were excellent in the first half and blew Chichester away, our defence was top drawer and offered Chi nothing. The final score of 35-21 didn’t really reflect our dominance, we conceded two late tries with the game won.

“We have a real momentum currently picking up 21 points from a possible 25 since the turn of the year, scoring lots of points and tries.

“There were a lot of very good individual performances – in the pack Kyle Fairs, Michael Tredgett, Johnny Goward, Dan Cass all had excellent games and in the backs Aaron Linfield, Marcus Condon and Oli Chennell excelled but the man of the match was Rich Tredgett who was outstanding in a dominant performance.”

Horsham visit Cobham on Saturday.