With this being the rearranged date for the postponed game before Christmas, and Lewes’ pitch water logged, the venue for this match was switched to Medway at the last minute.

Despite the torrential overnight rain, Medway’s first XV pitch was in good condition for the start of the game. However, the many, very heavy rain squalls that occurred during the game, and the howling gale, did make playing conditions very difficult.

Given Lewes’ lowly league position and Medway’s recent good form, probably most people were expecting a comfortable victory for the local lads. Nothing could be further from the truth and only a converted try two minutes from the final whistle enabled them to snatch the narrowest of victories.

Medway played up the slight slope and into the howling gale in the first half. They attempted to play their normal expansive game whereas a more conservative approach may have been more appropriate. Passes went astray and as frustration grew they tried even harder to force the play and try speculative off-loads that just never seemed to work. Lewes committed few in numbers to the break down, defended robustly and were able to regularly repel the Medway attacks. Lewes opened the scoring with a straight forward penalty after 3 minutes, and then Ollie Best replied scoring a converted try when he ghosted through some sloppy defence after 7 minutes. Medway were guilty of squandering a number of clear scoring opportunities in the first half that would have settled their nerves. However, as time went on and the score line remained close, Lewes’s self-belief grew and on 34 minutes they kicked another penalty and on the stroke of half time scored an excellent converted try to take an improbable 13 – 7 half time lead.

With the elements in their favour, one would still have expected Medway to overhaul this deficit with relative ease. However, the second half was a dour battle; Lewes had lots of possession and controlled the ball well; Medway were penalised at the breakdown at regular intervals; and when they did get the ball, Lewes were hard to break down and defended exceptionally well. It looked like being “one of those days” for Medway but with one last huge effort, the forwards pick and drove time after time towards the Lewes line. Eventually Jack Reddish forced his way over from short range to make the score 13 – 12 to Lewes and Medway needing the tricky conversion to win the game. Up stepped Ollie Best to kick with aplomb.

Not a great spectacle for rugby but as Medway’s coach Taff Gwilliam said afterwards, “You have to win ugly at times”. Medway face the tough prospect of Deal and Betteshanger Lions next week at home in the league. Hopefully the weather gods will start to be kinder to us soon!

Medway team;

Petch, Humphrey, Cooley, Reddish, Weobley, Easton, Beaumont, Samuela, Dance, Best, Chalmers, Liua’ana, Burns, Catlin, Wadsworth, Hill, Huntley, Brice.