Tonbridge Juddians v Taunton Titans

Do you remember an Ella Fitzgerald song “Into each life somerain must fall – but too much is falling in mine”? I suspect that must have been how The Titans were feeling after a 68-31 mauling at the hands of National2 (South) league leaders Tonbridge Juddians last Saturday (writes Dick Macey).

 The long four-hour road trip into Kent is never a good prelude to an important game but that is part and parcel of the game at their level and then to encounter a form team coming at you from minute one will really put you on your toes.   It was surprising that the Titans held a slender lead 10-7 through a try by Ollie Down and Gary Kingdom converting and then adding a penalty goal in the early exchanges but such success was short-lived.

 It wasn’t so much that the Titans were playing poorly it was the fact that TJ's seized upon every mistake and every opportunity to add to their score line.Their forwards were cohesive and always on the front foot and their backs grabbed every opportunity to bring pace to their collective team effort. The real turning point

centred around a yellow card putting a Titan in the bin for 10 minutes during which time TJ's capitalised on the man advantage and took their points tally almost out of sight.    They were proving the better side on the day and when Titan’s wing Freddie Fraser was taken off to hospital with a shoulder injury their hard-tackling talisman had gone.

 For all of their difficulties the Titans never gave up the fight and really came back into the game in the last 15 minutes.    Determined to get something from the contest they grabbed tries through Isaac Dalton and BJ Chapman, both converted by Gary Kingdom, and in the elongated period of injury time Dalton went over for his second try, again converted by Kingdom, to reward the Titans with a try-scoring bonus point.  

 As in last season’s competition The Rams took control of the league to gain themselves promotion so it would appear that is the intention of last Saturday’s opponents during this league campaign    From the Titans’ viewpoint this result can be viewed as an early warning but having started their own season well this correspondent will expect to see them back on track when they return to Towergate Stadium this coming Saturday to take on Old Albanian (kick off 3.00pm).