Second half flair points way for H&B

The ambitious Kent club sent a strong second team bolstered by half a dozen first team players - mostly backs - and their game plan was to move the ball about and run H&B off their feet. The strategy worked from the start, Aylesford's athletic, mobile forwards beating H&B to the ball, and their fast, aggressive defence pushing the off-side limits to snuff out H&B's well-worked attacks. In turn, when they attacked, the visitors' speedy, confident backline broke some occasionally wrong-footed individual tackling to run in four unanswered tries in an otherwise fiercely-contested first half.

But by half time - and at a potentially humiliating 28-0 down - H&B's pack had begun to up their tempo, and the second half saw H&B produce another of their best patches of play this season. Paul Flood's tireless ball-carrying made repeated inroads up the middle, Steve McManus and Martin Shepherd put in some huge hits, the scrummaging clicked into power mode and some inspired lineout throwing and jumping provided lightning-fast off-the-top ball to enable the backs to turn the tide against Aylesford.

Half-backs Kit & Piers Claughton combined for a number of beautifully-judged breaks and fluid inter-passing moves which carved open the defence, and set up several overlaps in the now-rampant back line which would have led comfortably to victory had the final pass been taken. David Northen and Jimmy Adams - who had a good day with the boot - ran some incisive attacking lines, and the back line - with Tom Brampton razor sharp when he came on in the second half - once again looked a potentially formidable unit, offloading well in the tackle, and needing only a little polishing of passing skills wide-out to complete their effectiveness as an attacking force.

The pack looked increasingly sharp and aggressive, combining well with the backs to completely turn the tables on the visitors, whose attacking options were reduced to speculative kicking.

The second half tries came from George Cullingford after some good work by skipper Neil Redman and his pack; Piers Claughton's sleight-of-foot following Flood's break off the back of a scrum; and Kit Claughton finishing off his brother's half break. Adams kicked two good conversions.

Forwards coach Jerry Hohenkerk was happy with the performance. "We played some of our best rugby out there," he said. "Aylesford posed us just the sort of problems we needed to face, and after giving them too much respect in the early part of the game, we came back and controlled the game well. We could well have won it, but that really wasn't what the friendlies leading up to our play-off game are about. It was all about getting our own game working effectively, and we increasingly did that as the game progressed."

Team: Martin Shepherd, Ben Davies, Ilyan Granville (Paul Northen), Neil Redman, George Cullingford, Nick Redmond (Andrew Hitch), Steve McManus, Paul Flood, Piers Claughton, Kit Claughton, Rob Sparks, David Northen, Ben Campbell, Danny Ralph (Tom Brampton), Jimmy Adams.

l This bank holiday weekend H&B have a break, before travelling to Burgess Hill for their penultimate Sussex League fixture next Saturday. They still don't know which Kent One side they'll face at the end of April, or whether it will be a home or away play-off. But the odds are on it being Sittingbourne, at William Parker, with Gillingham Anchorians (a point adrift with two to play) an outside chance.