Our 1st XV put in an impressive performance to get a bonus point win against Ventnor away on the Isle of Wight on Saturday to kick off their Hampshire Division 1 campaign.

Despite the difficult journey we started well, but it was Ventnor that opened the scoring with a penalty goal in a rare visit to our half. We then played our best rugby of the game scoring three tries through number 8 Stuart Pearce (pictured), centre Callum Butler and full back Chris Frost, but we missed all three conversions and a simple penalty attempt, which nearly proved costly. Ventnor scored a further penalty to make the score 15-6 at half time.

Ventnor started to dominate the second half. They scored two good tries and a conversion to open up an 18-15 lead. With injuries to both Dave Jones and Henry Benson we had to dig deep and were eventually rewarded when number 8 Stuart Pearce crashed over with five minutes to go. Callum Butler added the conversion to make the final score 22-18.