The Heughers and Horden 2s played out an extremely entertaining 15 try fest with the league leaders continuing their unbeaten record of the season. Apologies if the report is more haphazard than normal but I appear to have misplaced my match notes.

On a sunny New Friarage spring day Horden started off with an unconverted try after their first attack. Very ominous and they looked threatening every time they had the ball. But Rovers gradually came into the game with some forward pressure and after several of our large units couldn't force their way over the colossus that is Adam Strong showed them how it is done with a muscular drive to the line. Squid Maguire's conversion put us ahead 7-5 for the first, and unfortunately final, time in the game. Horden scored 4 more tries on the first half with Rovers getting one and it was Jacob Robinson who powered across the whitewash for us. Again Squid converted and the half time score was 14 - 31.

Horden carried on the second half where they left off in the first by scoring another try to extend their lead to 14 - 36. But the second half was a much better performance by the Heughers and indeed, if my arithmetic is correct, we outscored our high flying opponents. The first of our 4 second half tries was scored by Callum Whitehead who provided his own write up for this try. Apparently it was a magnificent 40 metre plus effort. Our next scorer was young tyro Zak Fallow with a strong run. Squid added the extras for both these tries. The next try was possibly our best with good hands putting Lewy Dixon into space and he outpaced the defence with a strong run down the wing. Squid missed the kick. Boo. Lewy might have scored another classic try when he lofted an up and under and collected his own kick to race clear only to be pulled back as some of our, admittedly knackered, players had not retreated.

We got a further try right on full time when, after Horden had conceded a number of penalties on their line, referee Mark Wise awarded us a penalty try. Horden had scored 24 second half points to our 26 for a final score of 40-55 to them.

Many, many thanks to Horden who very sportingly lent us players when we were short and also kept the numbers even throughout. And a further thanks to their players that guested for us and put in excellent shifts. Indeed some of the biggest hits were Horden on Horden. It was apparent why Horden are top of the league with an expansive game plan and the skilful players to carry it out. We wish them the best of luck for the rest of the season. But perhaps not so much when we visit them for the Pyman Cup semi final.

But the Heughers should be pretty proud of themselves too. Short of numbers and with a severely disrupted warm up it looked like we would be blown away at times in the first half. But we dug in and the second half was a testament to the team's battling qualities. Virtually everyone had to play the full 80 minutes with no respite- a feat some probably had last achieved about 20 years ago No-one let their team mates down. and most of all everyone enjoyed their rugby

With competition from virtually every other player it was Zak Fallow who got the nod for player of the match with an all round, aggressive, athletic performance. Well done Zak.

Squad

L Dixon
C Railton
Horden player
Horden player
N Harrison
K Maguire
A Strong
D Carroll
D Brackstone
J Robinson
O Dunn
J Turner (c)
C Whitehead
Z Fallow
E Wilkins