Basingstoke 24pt, Newbury II 31

THIS competitive friendly game saw Basingstoke surrender an early advantage at Down Grange on Saturday.

They used the late addition to their fixture list to give all their subs a run-out and a chance to stake a claim for a first-team place in next Saturday's game against London Nigerians.

The game had eight tries and some running rugby to delight the fans, but 'Stoke will not be happy with the last 30 minutes.

After controlling the first 50 minutes, they played loose rugby and drifted away from their game plan that had served them so well.

The game started slowly, with 'Stoke edging the opening exchanges. They were eventually rewarded on 15 minutes when Elimon Chimbima broke through the Newbury defence to score, Seb Berti adding the two extra points.

On 25 minutes, Berti narrowly missed a penalty but, at this stage, 'Stoke were starting to play the better rugby and were putting into practice what they have worked on at training.

Despite continued pressure from the home side, things went pear-shaped when what looked to be an overlap for the home side saw the Newbury defence collect an interception in their own 22 and run the length of the pitch for a try on 35 minutes.

That was the end of the first-half scoring, but the game developed into a more competitive contest when Newbury had a player yellow-carded just before half-time.

The second half started badly for 'Stoke with Russell Northcote also having a 10-minute break from proceedings after 42 minutes.

This spurred on the home side and, with some controlled patterns of play, they were rewarded with a Berti dropped goal on 46 minutes, a converted try by Tom Rees two minutes later and another converted try by Vincent Feausi on 50 minutes.

This gave the home side a 24-5 lead and they looked well placed for a victory.

Newbury regained their sin-binned player and made the advantage count as 'Stoke seemed to relax.

Coupled with some poor defending, the visitors were able to score tries on 53 and 55 minutes, both converted to reduce the arrears to 24-19.

'Stoke were not pressing up as much as in the early proceedings and this allowed Newbury to have more time on the ball and score a further try on 66 minutes to tie the scores.

Four minutes later, Newbury again took advantage of poor defence when 'Stoke had too many players at the breakdown which allowed space for the visitors to score a converted try and lead for the first time 31-24.

Try as they could for the final 10 minutes, 'Stoke could not find another score.

While there were many positives to take from the game, they will need to tidy up both the scrums and lineouts before next week and close down the space they give their opponents for the full 80 minutes.

Afterwards, watching coach Jim Dixon said: "When we played our game plan we were the dominant side.

"We cannot afford to relax and allow the opposition back into games as we did today. Finally, we must be able to convert overlaps into points and keep our defensive communication at all time. We have things to work on for next week's game to maintain our league efforts."

Basingstoke: S Humberstone; S Buckland (rep G Murdoch), V Feausi, E Chimbima (rep D Jones), O Rogers (rep C White); D Lillywhite, S Berti; P Perkins (rep M Rushworth), P Maxwell, R Bussati, A Wilson (rep C Williams), R Northcote, S Appleby, T Rees, T Northcote.