Trojans win away to Portsmouth

Trojans Men's 1st XV 51- 23 Portsmouth (Away) - 8th Oct

Grey and chilly, not just the weather but Portsmouth's mood after their comprehensive defeat at the hands of a rampant Trojans side determined to prove they can play some rugby.

The pre match write up in the local press had Trojans as very much the underdog and Portsmouth as certain victors. But Trojans re-wrote the script.

It looked as though all the predictions from Portsmouth looked correct as Portsmouth were 7-0 up within a minute when an intercepted pass let Portsmouth run half the length of the pitch to score.

But Trojans didn’t let this phase them at all and came back almost immediately with a converted try from Cusack after four minutes, 7-7. On the twelve minute mark Portsmouth kicked a penalty to ease into the lead 7-10.

On twenty six minutes Rudi Kochanowski scored a try and Trojans were on top from here on in, Cusack kicked a penalty on thirty one minutes and Sean Fennell playing in the unaccustomed right wing position scored a try on thirty seven. So the half time score was 10-20 to Trojans

The second half started as expected with Portsmouth coming out of the traps quickly and kicking a penalty in the second minute, 13-20.

Trojans then cut loose and scored another 5 tries, with Portsmouth only able to add a converted try and a penalty. Trojans totally destroyed Portsmouth in this half, including pushing them back over their own line from a five metre scrum, Portsmouth ran out of front rows and scrums went uncontested after about 15 minutes of the period, and they were under the cosh in every phase of play.

Joby Kochanowksi, Brother Rudi with his second, Chris Hamp, Dave Strange and a penalty try were the scorers with Cusack adding three conversions.

Coach Barry Bridgman said, " I have been saying that we are not a bad side, that we just needed to fix a few little things, change the game plan slightly and we would start to play some decent rugby.

This was a game we fancied as they had only won one game and we knew that we had had a good week in training so we were confident that we could do a job. I wasn't expecting us to be quite so good though! We out rucked, out mauled and out scrummaged them, we ran through and around them and for the most part our defence was very good.

I hope that's the start of the players believing in themselves and the start of a climb up the table. We are capable of winning our fair share of games in this league, we just have to be consistently as good as we were today.

We were superb from 1 to 18 but I have to single out skipper Mark Greenhalgh, he saw off three props today, made some good carries and his tackle count as every week was massive.

We cannot rest on our laurels though, it’s Thanet at home next week and they are a target, add to it that we haven't won at home yet and it becomes very important. So another good training week is needed"

Squad

1 Mark Greenhalgh

2 Dave Strange

3 Marcus Coffin

4 Ali McGregor

5 Mark Amey

6 Rudi Kochanowski

7 Toby Pritchard-Davies

8 Rob Edmondson

9 Neal Haworth

10 Troy Cusack

11 Chris Hamp

12 Chris Boyd

13 Olli Johnson

14 Sean Fennell

15 Joby Kochanowski

16 Tom Bryan

17 Dan Corbett

18 Chris Lynch

Scores

4 min Cusack Try & Con

26 min R Kochanowski, Try

31 min Cusack, Pen

37 min Fennell, Try

44 min J Kochanowski, Try , Cusack Con

60 min Penalty Try, Cusack Con

70 min R Kochanowski Try, Cusack Con

74 min Hamp Try

81 min Strange Try

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