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Match report for Sat 26th Sep 2009 @ 14:00, 1st XV

A largely unchanged Farnham team looked to build on last week’s performance and delivered an excellent result away to a big strong Grove team.

Summary

After last week’s excellent showing in the cup Farnham looked to get the league campaign back on track at Grove. A largely unchanged Farnham team looked to build on last week’s performance and delivered an excellent result away to a big strong Grove team. With excellent support play being the basis for Farnham’s success going forward and excellent tackling and aggression at the breakdown ensuring disruption of Grove’s game going forward.

First half

Farnham Royal got off to a slow start with Grove pinning the Royals back and poor first time tackling led to the first score with Grove catching a defensive clearance on the right touch line and their winger scoring in the corner, subsequently converted, 7-0. An even passage of play ensued with both Farnham and Grove being pinged for infringements and missing penalty opportunities. Until a lovely break by Mike Alsen and pop to supporting No 8 Jamie Moffat breaking a couple of tackles to score under the posts. Mike Alsen was on hand to convert, 7-7. Royals then had a try disallowed after a lovely switch from Jamie Moffat to Paul Whelan on the left hand wing ran through the Grove defence to score - only to be pulled back for a foot on the touch line.

Royals got back on the score sheet again after Mike Alsen caught the Grove defence napping after taking a quick tap penalty and jinked his way through for a try. The resulting conversion by Mike Alsen meant Royals were 7-14 up. Shortly before the break Royals got another score this time Jason Grumbs, collecting a pop from Adam Barley broke through the middle of the park and scored to make it three tries in the first half. Mike Alsen was not as accurate with the boot from the resulting conversion leaving the score at half time 7-19 to Farnham.

Second Half

The second half started scrappy with Farnham taking their foot off the gas. Grove got an early penalty which they converted to bring the scores to 10-19. Again Royals broke forward with excellent interlinking by the forwards and good all round support play, highlighted when another Jamie Moffat break was offloaded to Jason Grumbs who popped to Rob Hore at centre for his debut score for Farnham Royal. Coverted by Mike Alsen to take the score to 10-26. Among the excellent passages of play there is a need to highlight the Farnham numpty of the match, Dave Marsden, for dropping three subsequent high balls at full back. Young lock Stuart Moffat on as a substitute rips the ball from a maul to offload to brother Jamie Moffat who makes the hard yards and then pops to Jason Grumbs in support to score. Mike Alsen is unlucky with the conversion and misses narrowly wide 10-31. With tired legs Farnham let Grove in for a late consolation try, converted 17-31.

Farnham Royal Team:

1. Antonio Flore 2. Jim Stuart 3. Tom Sutherland 4. Jason Grums 5. Big Adam Barley 6. Mike Alsen 7. John James 8. Jamie Moffat 9. Luke Morgan 10. Paul Whelan (70 min) 11. Morris Ngaru (55 min) 12. Rob Hore 13. Ben Inglis 14. Steve Sirrett 15. Dave Marsden 16. Duncan Fawcett (70 min) 17 Stuart Moffat (55 min)