The warm up was hampered by several players turning up late, the captain included, the inability to use your hands, the sideways gale, the icy rain and the cold. Did I mention it was cold? The Ath tried to warm up best they could but to little or no avail. Harborough, opting for the sensible approach went back in before kickoff and it was telling straight from kickoff that it had done them some good.

Their line speed and organised defence caused the Ath issues all afternoon and were repeatedly awarded penalties from bossing the breakdown and forcing the Ath to hold on. The pressure soon built and within 5 mins the Harborough 8 smashed through our tiring defence and scored under the posts. Converted.

This galvanised the Ath, now realising they were in a game and not the film Frozen looked to take back territory. The first half was particularly hard work playing up hill into the wind but the Ath knew if they persevered their determination would pay off. After some good sustained pressure and good carrying from Dustin Smith, Matt Beavan managed to step and spin his way over for his first of the afternoon. Somewhere in the build up one of Harborough's very strong second row suffered a quite serious looking knee injury and had to go off, we wish him a speedy recovery.

The Ath looking to keep up momentum were soon back on the Harborough 5m through several quick penalties and good forward's 1-ball work allowed Matt Gunnell to crash over from close range.

Half Time 7-10

The second half, with the wind and rain carrying the Ath, allowed them to build on their first half performance and run in 7 tries. Matt Beavan completed his hat-rick through two similar tries, beating his man and running around the Harborough backline to score both times in the corner. Ash Holland slotting a conversion outside in the process. Darryl Davison was rewarded with a try after strong carries all afternoon through the midfield, converted by himself.

The Ath pack continue to grow in the second half and their set piece was causing Harborough severe issues; Jack Walker on his return, stealing many a line out as humanly possible whilst the Ath pack took many against the head to dominate the scrum. The dominance in the scrum soon produced a return with the Ath pack going over twice for two team tries (Matt Gunnell stealing both whilst congratulating the rest of the pack). He also got his 4th soon after, being carried over the try line like a rugby ball by Kyle Sargeant (who was phenomenal all afternoon) and flattening him into the cold, dank mud.

Edward Webb rounded off proceedings getting the last try with Jack Walker forcing the Harborough jumper to knock their lineout down allowing Ed to catch the ball, bump the fallback and go over. Converted superbly on the touchline by Ash Holland.

All in all a very strong performance in truly awful conditions, I still haven't warmed up. Credit to Harborough for never giving up and going very close on several occasions in the second half showing great courage to stay in the game. Thank you for your hospitality afterwards with warm food and plenty of tea. Special mention goes to the Ref for facilitating a great game and sticking it out in the horrible conditions.

We've now got a 3 week break from the league with a fixture away at Burbage on the 5th Jan. If you want a game this weekend, 22nd Dec, fear not as we've got a Barbarians fixture against the Light Blues.

Merry Christmas

HZB!!

Man of the match: Kyle Sargeant
Dick of the day: Matt Gunnell (undeserved...)