If only games were 40 minutes long

This report is not meant to be an unbiased and accurate account of proceedings, more a Teddington flavoured taster.

The 1st XV had one of the best first half performances I’ve seen for a long while. Although much of the half involved defence work, the boys worked to a plan, the plan being not to get left in the blocks, but to really get stuck in for the first 20 minutes. And boy did they do that. Although we didn’t see much of the ball and the Big Winchester pack kept us pinned deep in our own half, our defensive patterns and determination was unshakable.

Time and again Winchester battered around the fringes and in midfield, but we tackled hard and offensively, to a man it was hardcore rugby poetry in motion. Winchester were getting frustrated and eventually were forced to try and crack the Teddington nut further out, and that’s when we struck. Each time they ventured away from their pack we turned them over before the cavalry arrived. This worked a treat on a number of occasions and from these turnovers we scored 3 quality tries all from 60 metres plus. We could have had at least two more, which I’m sure would have been enough to secure a win.

Long term injury absentee Liam Lonergan was back to his best and having a stormer, he made a couple of monster line breaks and set up a couple of tries before he tweaked his hammy on 35 mins and had to limp off. Hopefully he'll be back soon. Tries from Henry Kirchner, Brant Palin and Tom Booth and a conversion from Chris Dickson meant that we had a 17-3 lead at the break.

The second half was a different story. We couldn’t defend with the same lung busting intensity and gave away bucket loads of penalties. With two yellow cards in the match we also had to play for far too much of the game with a player short and this began to show in the final quarter. Try as we might we just couldn’t break out of our own half. Winchester had us on the ropes and kept their belief and all players on the pitch and scored three tries of their own in the second half. For Teddington a very disappointing result, but that brilliant first half performance must give everyone the belief that we can play great rugby and make a big impression on this league........when we put our mind, body and soul into it.

Centre and MoM Seb Woods was at the heart of the action and tackled everything that moved for 80 minutes. He really worked his socks off throughout and well deserves his award.