Worthing RFC captain James Arthur’s weekly column (November 4)

The side this week saw more changes with Charlie McGowan unavailable and Rob Smith pulling a muscle at training on Thursday night, meant that Sam Pitchford made the trip up from Hartbury College to play in the second row, Joe Burns came in as front-row cover and hooker Matt Miles moved to the back row as I moved to number eight.

We have had a good rivalry with Henley with a number of close games over the years, and with both teams went into the game having won six from their first eight games so far, but with Henley one-point ahead thanks to an extra bonus point.

The day was set for a tight physical encounter and the game certainly lived up to expectations.

It would be easy to say we lost the game in the last minute with the last play of the game but in truth we lost the game in the first 20 minutes.

We started poorly allowing Henley to race into a 10-3 lead. This was down to poor defence both as a team and individually with missed tackles a major factor.

When we did start to get ourselves into the game we proved what a good defensive team we can be. We got ourselves back into it and took the lead just before half-time through a Joe Govett interception try, (his third in as many years against the Hawks) and the boot of Matt McLean, who had a fine day scoring 22 points in total.

Unfortunately, we then allowed Henley to score just before the half-time whistle so they went into the break leading.

This seemed to galvanise us and we started the second half well, putting far more pressure on the Hawks and after some great forward play and slick handling from the backs, Greg Sullivan scored a well-worked try.

We continued to pressure the opposition and only a knock-on and an adjudged forward pass prevented us from extending our lead.

Henley struck back to close the gap with seven minutes to go leaving us with a two-point lead.

The rest, as they say, is history, and we all know the end result. To say that we were gutted would be an understatement, but the good thing about rugby is that we have the chance to make things right this Saturday. Something that we will be working very hard at training this week to ensure happens.

This week there were wins for Ealing, Lydney, Westcombe Park and Richmond. There was a surprise win for Clifton at Southend, and Taunton beat Jersey.

On Saturday, we face Lydney a side who beat Shelford at the weekend and now sit only a couple of places below us. So it only leaves me to say that I hope to see as many of you up at the rugby ground on Saturday for what will be another tough encounter.