Shoreham v Heathfield 13th November 2016

Shoreham travelled to play Heathfield in their second tournament match. Shoreham started strongly forcing Heathfield onto the back foot and quickly took a 2-0 lead. Then something happened - either we got complacent, they got better or we just started making mistakes - it was probably a combination of all three. Whatever it was it caused us to slowly fall apart. Lack of pressure on our opponents, poor positioning, silly penalties, numerous poor hands leading to knocks on - with a couple of minutes to go to halftime we found ourselves at 2-2. At half time we were 4-2 down - the lack of chase after the kick off and missed tackles that gifted them the fourth try was the low point of the match.

Second half we started with more purpose and managed to cut down some of the errors and some determined play saw us pull ourselves back level at 4-4. At this point we again stepped back, failed to put Heathfield under pressure and made too many mistakes. This allowed Heathfield to pull ahead 6-4 - they were playing well but this was still a game we should have been winning. I think they felt they had it won at this point, and we looked quite flat, but again we decided to focus our game and slowly but surely we got better. Finally getting ourselves level Louie Stillman capped a determined effort with the winning try - 7-6 to Shoreham.