Will Knight and his senior men’s squad travelled to Cambridgeshire for their first-ever meeting with Shelford. The Papa Johns Cup, organised by the R.F.U. sees Havant in group 4 pitted against Shelford and Harpenden from Regional 1 South-East and Camberley who just finished behind us in South-Central.

The senior squad was stretched further by the unavailability and injured, thus giving first XV debuts to Jamie Drew in the front row and Franco Tomic starting on the bench. The game also saw the return to action for Jake Hewett on the wing and Jake Waterman on the bench.

Within four minutes of the game starting Havant found themselves on the 5-meter mark of Shelford, having to thank the astute kicking of Jacob Knight for that. The following catch and drive saw Wes Dugan come up with the ball and accept the plaudits from his fellow players, Joel Knight missed the tight conversion but Havant led 0-5.

Shelford’s reply was swift as they moved into the Havant 22, an infringement at the ruck meant an easy 3 points for their kicker. Shelford 3 Havant 5.

With Havant always looking dangerous in attack, Jake Hewett found space out on the wing, he cleverly drew the player before offloading to Joel Knight who made no mistake for the 2nd try. The conversion again was missed in the strong cross-field wind. Havant led 3-10 with twelve minutes gone.

Shelford applied their first real bit of sustained pressure, but at the crucial moment, Havant created a huge turn-over and the ball was cleared to halfway. Back came Shelford and their pressure finally paid off with a well-worked try which was converted making the score 10-10 each.

This sparked Havant back into life with solid runs from the pack and in particular debutant Jamie Drew. The strong running paid off when Rory Penfold was afforded too much space out on the wing to run in Havant’s 3rd try. Joel Knight converted and Havant led going into the break. There was time for a trade mark Harry Carr run down the wing but he run out of space before he could dot down.

Halftime Shelford 10 Havant 17

A ten-minute spell at the start of the 2nd period put the game beyond a youthful Shelford. First, the lively Rory Penfold intercepted an attacking move and run it in from the halfway line, Havant now led 10-22.

Minutes later after some fantastic rugby by all three Knight brothers, Rory Penfold completed his hat trick of tries, this time the conversion by Joel Knight was good stretching the lead further 10-29.

The next fifteen minutes or so was pretty much Shelford trying to find a way through a sea of blue and white hooped shirts but tenacious tackling and hard rucking gave them no way through. Frustrations were boiling over on and off the pitch.

Try number six was the Joel Knight show, his fantastic line cut through the Shelford defence leaving them grasping at shadows, he duly converted and Havant led 10-36 with less than five minutes to go.

The final act saw Shelford score their 2nd try with minutes to go, frustrating for the Havant defensive line making the score 17-36.

The game became a little scrappy in time added on by the referee with frustrations boiling over again on both the pitch and the sidelines. Rugby was the winner in the end in the battle of South-central and East.

Full-time Shelford 17 Havant 36

Will Knight’s thoughts after the game
“We have looked at this cup run as three finals, it’s the mentality that suits this group of players and they delivered today.
We were always in control, and I felt our defence was excellent. Shelford were always looking to move the ball and played with great physicality but they weren’t able to break us from distance.
In attack, we were really clinical and scored some really good tries. We will need to be a little sharper next weekend and we have a number of players coming back into contention.
The opportunity that this cup offers is excellent and the team are excited to see how far they can go.”