The newly formed Old Gravesendians & Vigo 2nd XV – the VeeGees – went to the top of the table after a hard fought and sometimes spicy game against visiting Gillingham Anchorians. Gillingham brought a relatively young team to take on the Combined team at Bronte View but, in the end, age & experience trumped youth and pace. And, in veteran Matt Coomber and prop Danny Snaith, the VeeGees possessed more than enough age & experience. Matt has been a mighty warrior for the Old Gravesendians over many years – in fact, I was trying to remember whether I had ever played against him and possibly had in one of my (many) retirement games when he may well have been a youth.
Anyway – the match. Anchorians never really got used to the notorious Old G’s slope, and without Hillary and Tensing in their team, struggled to conquer the incline. Needless to say, the VeeGees possessed plenty of know-how and were always able to stay ahead. It hadn’t taken the VeeGees long to work out that the more prosaic ‘ball-up-your-jumper’ approach would probably be the order of the day. In fact, that is exactly how they took the lead, Harry King finishing off a series of forward drives to go over in the corner. Anchorians fought back hard, moving the ball sweetly but with a tendency to drop the ball at critical times. They bdid manage a couple of tries but tries by Sam Tye and Danny Snaith kept the VeeGees ahead 15-12 at the interval.
The second half saw the VeeGFees experience come to the fore. They continued with their driving game, resulting in a brace of tries for Danny Snaith and one for Matt Coomber. Martin Fry added a conversion

Team: G.Luck; G.Sandhu, C.Gibson, S.Tye, R.Dolan; W.McArthur, M.Fry; T.Snaith, R.Allen, D.Snaith; A.Cameron, D.Sellway; M.Collins-0Jones, M.Coomber; H.King
Reps (all used) S.Harling, J.Wardrope, C.Fooks, G.Cole