Despite the ongoing stormy conditions (Darragh) sweeping through the lane and creating difficult playing conditions, this looked like two relatively even balanced teams testing each other out in the early stages. Although on paper this was top of the table versus bottom of mid-table, to my mind Havant started well, and seemed to be offering the referee what he wanted to see and were in effect gaining the benefits and field position accordingly. That said, perhaps while acknowledging Dorking's prowess, we potentially gave them too much respect and when presented with early penalty opportunities chose to take the easy points, instead of perhaps looking to take more early risk by developing the opportunities for bigger scores with an outline aim of grabbing control of the game. To my mind we looked strong in the scrum, and clearly had opportunities to scrummage close to their line, with a good solid purple while our 9 was in the Sin Bin, but instead of applying heavier pressure on on one of their weaknesses, we chose either to take points or to kick to the corner. While clearly not wrong, this was early in the game when the relative scoreline pressures are still diluted by the timeline available and hence missed opportunities are less impacting. Regrettably our lineout looked less robust, and as such the four excursions we developed deep into their the red zone (via hard earned midfield penalties), effectively came to nothing because we were too reliant on our lineout to deliver, and it clearly wasn't a failsafe mechanism. For me the 10 minute carding of their Hooker was possibly a marker to take the opportunity to put their scrum under more pressure - but instead we chose to play through the lineout and got nothing in return. As such we probably didn't maximize our scoring opportunities in the first half (only two penalties), while Dorking who had started relatively passively with a penalty kick, began generating play with more confidence and flow, subsequently gaining field position in our red zone and before delivering a well executed cross-field kick to their winger, who having beat our fullback to the catch, shimmied pass the cover tackles to score. To my mind Dorking were ahead, but we had probably had the better opportunities.

Halftime: HRFC 6 Dorking 11

Havant came out firing better than they had finished the first half, we looked to be playing on the front foot which was putting Dorking under some pressure. Our bench were now value and heavy hitters were carrying well creating good continuity and possession. Both defences remained relatively strong and coherent, and field position was largely still being generated by outcomes of the the referees whistle. A high tackle by their 5 subsequently won Dorking a yellow card, which then allowed Havant to play with a bit more space and some more possession. We quickly exploited having more bulk on the park with a bundled forwards try by Haz Young (11-11), they maintained the lead with a converted penalty, before our backs subsequently broke through in broken play - Joel eventually offloading to Ben GriffIn (MoM) to slide over in the corner (18-11). The real clincher came at 69'mins, when Alfie Wainscoat was bundled over next to the posts (25-14). With less than 10 to play - To my mind we were now in control and should have been able to switch to a more defensive stance to protect our lead. Instead we allowed Dorking to generate opportunities by kicking deep and letting them run at us from deep field - it was only now that you could sense they looked dangerous in attack. With deep penetrating runs and good inter-play, they were starting to find holes in our defence. Inevitably, our structure was not fully watertight and at 77min they created a well worked try, breaking through the weak tackles to bring the score back to 25-21. Again a more resilient defensive posture would perhaps have held out against anymore attacks in the limited time available, but having relinquished possession they once again seemingly kicked up a gear to create overlaps, before subsequently beating the final 1 on 1 to score. (25-28).

Full Time: HRFC 25 Dorking 28

Will Knight's words
"So frustrating to miss out again in a very tight affair. We played some good rugby but at this level you have to take your chances and we had four scoring opportunities in the first half which we failed to take and you can’t afford to do that. There are lots of positives but it is another game we certainly could have won. We now have two crucial games before Christmas which are key to our season.