U S Portsmouth

Trojans were very pleased with their bonus point win over US Portsmouth although the score doesn’t reflect the closeness of the game for large periods with the USP forwards generally on top but with the Trojans running and inter-passing gaining the points.

Trojans started strongly and pressurised the USP line but their defence held firm and USP worked their way into the Trojans half until a loose ball was picked up by full-back Joby Kochanowski who cut through the USP line towards the try line before slipping the ball to winger Charlie Pooley to score in the corner with an excellent long range conversion from Matt Evenhand. For the next twenty minutes the game was quite even with USP strong in the scrum and Trojans living off scraps from that area and with USP kicking a penalty. A scrum in the USP twenty two saw scrum half Neil Haworth dummy through the defence to pass out to wing forward Gregg Ward to complete the score with another conversion by Evenhand. For a five minute period just before half time USP camped on the Trojans line with maul after maul held out until they chose to pass down the line but a dropped pass allowed Trojans to hack the ball on and it ended up well within the USP twenty-two. From the ensuing mauls a quick ball across the line ended with Pooley scoring his second try with another long range conversion from Evenhand. The half ended with USP kicking a penalty to make the half time score 21 – 6 to Trojans.

The second half started with USP showing more determination and Trojans having to defend strongly but on the quarter hour Chris Boyd, who had moved out from No8 to substitute as fly-half because of the yellow card given to Smyth, made a tremendous break to take the ball half the length of the pitch before slipping the ball to Jake Bailey to run round behind the posts for an easy conversion for Evenhand. USP kept using their forward strength to keep pressure on Trojans but poor handling let them down and on the half hour a loose ball was gathered by full-back Joby Kochanowski who dashed through to score in the corner with the conversion just going wide.