Bath & Wiltshire Romans 30-34 Portsmouth Navy Seahawks
West of England League
Corsham Rugby Club
21/05/16
Courtesy of Bath & Wiltshire Romans
Photos by Paul Turner official club photographer
The Romans commenced their West of England League campaign and first competitive fixture at new home Corsham Rugby Union Club with a 34-30 defeat to United Services Portsmouth Navy Seahawks. Portsmouth had some big forwards which made breaks up the middle but the Romans had the better attacking plays but waited to get 28-0 down half way through the first half before they started to play or had the ball much.
Once the Romans got some ball, they started to show what they could do in poor weather conditions with it raining for the majority of the game, but the romans were still playing some good attacking rugby and pulled the half time score back to 28-18 down at half time. Debutant winger Chris Barter signed from Devizes RUFC showed some speed to go over for the first try, before romans stalwarts Jimmy Godfrey and Mike Perry going over for further scores. Mike Perry’s try was the try of the match and won the man of the match award with some other weaving attacking plays throughout the game.
In the second half Portsmouth only scored once, with Romans winning the half 12-6, Chris Barter went over for a second debut try, before experienced Fijian ex-forces international Bruce Vuetanatotoka went over for the final score, Vuetanatotoka converted 4 from 4 tries with half back Matthew Bodey slotting over the final conversion. Vuetanatotoka went close to scoring close to the sticks in the final minute of the game but was wrapped up by 3 defenders and the whistle for full time was blown after that tackle.
Chris Chatten, Chairman, commented “I believe if the game had gone on a few minutes longer we would have won the game, but we need to start games better, we lacked a bit of ‘grunt up front’ but it was a new team and we will take time to gel, the way the players fought back to a winning position showed strength of character and we now have two weeks in training before the next game to get some more fluidity”.
The Romans are based at Corsham Rugby Union Club, Lacock Road, Corsham and are keen to welcome new players 16+ of all abilities to training currently on Wednesday evenings from 7pm. The club are also interested in hearing from anyone who would like to sponsor the club in 2016 and have packages available for all budgets.
The Romans are next in action when they take on Bristol Sonics at their Dings RFC home on Saturday 4th June, 2.30pm kick off.