The first league game of the 2025/26 season saw us make the long journey to Cranleigh under bright blue skies. It turned out to be a very stern test for the newly formed Colts team. We have always had tight games in the past, but Cranleigh had done some serious recruiting over the summer and recently beaten Battersea Ironsides. This made me wonder what they are doing in our league.
Our warm-up was much better than usual, but I noticed it still had less intensity than Cranleigh’s. Straight from the start, we were under considerable pressure. Cranleigh’s line speed in defence was good, and they moved the ball quickly while also making use of a very big pack. Despite some heroic defending, the continuous waves of pressure led to us being 28-0 behind at half-time.
We improved considerably in the second half and started to take the game to them. Cranleigh began to get a little niggly, which I suspect was because they were not getting everything their own way, and we started to create our own chances. Sam Ohene scored an excellent try converted by George to narrow the gap, but we then immediately let them score straight from kick-off to stretch away again. After a further try from Cranleigh, we had the final say as Sam crashed over for his second try, resulting in a final score of a 42-12 loss – a rather sobering first game.
Positives
• We faced a stronger team but never quit and improved as the game progressed. The second half was much more even.
• Our tackling was generally good. Despite Cranleigh having much of the ball, we limited their scoring with strong defence, marred only by a couple of mistakes.
• Our work rate was exceptional. We largely kept the ball in our rucks, and their coaches commented on our physicality, which was impressive given the size of their pack.
Work Ons
• We need to improve our primary possession from scrums and lineouts. We are integrating three groups of players and need to work hard on this. We never really had sets of pods which meant ball carriers were often left isolated with few opportunities for pop passes inside or outside.
• We need more decisive moves in the back line, passing to wings and standing deeper to avoid pressure from the rush defence. Our backs acted as forwards, taking the ball up on their own. The ball never really got to the wingers with any space and we never really stretched Cranleigh's defence, including chipping in behind, which could have created openings for us.
• We also need to practice our setup for receiving the ball from kick-off. We never really had a structure of where to stand, and there wasn’t much support when the ball was caught, and we were running at the opposition. It would be good if a forward could run a hard line and receive the ball when it is caught.

Sometimes you just have to put your hands up and say you lost to a better team and this was one of those occasions. I don’t think man for man they were much better than us but they were much better structured and played smarter rugby by doing the basics well such as stretching our defence by going out wide but also chipping in behind to create opportunities. We need to learn lessons from how they did this and I have no doubt we will get better as the season progresses and the team gels.
Thanks as ever to the travelling support.