Haverhill 45 Thorpeness 12

The first scrum from Haverhill showed that Thorpeness were going to have a tough day in the office. Some sections of good play by the visitors were, in the most, spoilt by bad handling which the hosts seized on.

New signing Tony Becker looked very good in the fly-half position and, although some kicking from hand was a touch wayward, his command of the back line was a pleasure to watch.

With a very impressive Simon Lester at scrum-half and the ever-reliant Chris Flannery at number 8 combining superbly, Haverhill were able to release their centres of Micky Lansdowne and Monty Beaton regularly to create havoc with the Thorpeness defence.

Simon Potter and Ricky Brown were awesome in the loose play, with the front five anchoring the set-play brilliantly. The inclusion of Hamish Stewart in the second row gave Haverhill some extra height which was used in a number of turnover plays.

It took Haverhill 25 minutes to get on the board with a Potter penalty conversion, then two minutes later, a fantastic 40m Lansdowne run released full-back Woods for an under-post try and Potter conversion for 10-0.

On 29 minutes, a great Lester break-out and cleverly-timed pass released Lansdowne again.

The Lester loop round saw Lansdowne return the favour for his team-mate to score for 15-0

Thorpeness finally got into the Haverhill half and ripped a line ball to release their backs for a score in the corner for 15-5.

On 38 minutes, Lester and Lansdowne linked again to earn good yards and a storming Beaton crashed over in the corner for 20-5 at the turn.

With Haverhill dominant, a pass on 42 minutes saw the Thorpeness number 8 intercept and run 60 metres for a converted try and 20-12. This was their last time of threatening the Haverhill line.

Haverhill then proceeded to outplay Thorpeness in all facets of the game with lovely work between backs and forwards creating tries for Potter on 48 minutes, Joe Brown on 53 minutes and a second for Beaton on 68 minutes for 35-12.

Beaton scored his hat-trick on 73 minutes after a superb run by Ricky Brown and Flannery destroyed the visitors’ defence for 40-12.

Joe Brown got his second with three minutes to complete the scoring.