A game of two clear halves.. and one where we probably demonstrated that establishing momentum is key to the game at this level.

First half Barnes came out of the blocks in a very workman-like manner, took field position and quickly established a well-drilled attacking posture to subsequently take two early well worked scores. The London side were clearly showing their prowess and demonstrating why they are currently second in the league. That said Havant were competitive and resilient, but having quickly lost a player to a card (Hav 8 crossing) we were suddenly under most of the pressure as Barnes took the lions share of the play (0-12). By the second quarter, happily Havant had regained their composure, matching the physicality at the breakdown and subsequently secured a penalty goal and although Barnes took another try (3-19) we were now back in the game. While under this building scoreline pressure, Havant finally started to generate more coherent approach play and after a routine kick to the corner, catch and drive Haz Young finally got over the line at the bottom of the pile (8-19). Almost on cue - Not long after this score, we lost Haz to an 'unfortunate' yellow, (that problematical grey area of when is a maul a maul) - whereupon Barnes, now with more space to play in, quickly generated two more scores before HT (8-29).

Its probably fair to say that most of the large Havant crowd probably felt 'the writing was on the proverbial wall' for the second half, and if the lads couldn't find something extra, we wouldn't be taking any points today.

Half time came and following a bit of refocus/consolidation, a few enforced changes, a reshaped Havant lineup came out for the second half - if we were going to get something out of the day, it needed to be more assertive than the first. Sure enough Hav started to build some early momentum, our defence remained strong and resilient, the groundwork started to look more energetic, and our pace of recycle looked to have increased - so much so, the Barnes defensive structure seemed to be being rushed, unable to reset quick enough - thereby creating gaps and offering some clear space to attack. Wes Dugan was first, running passed a number of defenders to get over the line close to the posts on 42 min (15-29) after a committed carry. A similar effort from the restart put us back into the Barnes red zone and once again generating steady phase play, attacking off a rapid recycle close to the base of the breakdown, with multiple carriers including the midfield backs offering their services - it was finally Sean Shepherd breaking free and bundling over for the next score (22-29).. by now the somewhat frozen first half crowd had started to warm up, and were becoming more vocal with 'memories of our day at Bury St Edmunds' being recollected. Listening to the Barnes rebrief after our third score behind their goalposts, there was clearly a bit of shock and awe for the 2nd placed league contenders, they were having to acknowledge our strengths, our change of pace and they reaffirmed the need to get themselves back into the game doing the basics right - the term they used was 'lets enjoy the challenge!' Havant, now with the momentum were seemingly able to match the Barnes pace and once again generated another attacking opportunity whereupon Ben Holt snatched the ball at the breakdown and burrowed deep close to the line before being smothered by the Barnes cover defence, (the Hampshire line committee were unavailable for immediate comment, but the RFU linesman was superbly positioned to confirm the score!) ..the extras came from a well executed conversion outside by Joel K and we were back in the game again! (29-29). Barnes to their credit, showed their maturity and experience - they remained unfazed and having shaken themselves down were quick to reply through generation of well-crafted field position and solid approach work whereupon once close enough to the line they drove over to recover the lead on 68' (29-36).

Our real opportunity came next, when having restarted and regained field position we were now forcing the pace, such that Barnes subsequently lost their 10 to a rushed high tackle on Harry Carr (yellow Card). Whereupon we now had an opportunity for approx. 7 minutes to play with a man-up advantage, and so after a period of good attacking play in their Red Zone close to their line - we were challenging the defence close to the line with waves of leached carriers but hitting a well-formed defence in close - to my mind our line fever should have been contained to simply manipulating the defence, turning slow ball into quick ball and firing it outside to where the space now was to utilize the easy overlap. We tried once but failed due to inaccurate passing and alignment and went back to pummeling the line. This was probably a natural response because the momentum of play was with the second half forwards as such I can understand why we stuck with 'Route 1'. As it was - we didn't get the required score to take the lead, we lost the ball and subsequently the field position. This was probably all that Barnes needed - but with a mistimed tackle we lost our man-up advantage as we won a yellow, whereupon they held their field position and put us under pressure subsequently re-threatening our losing bonus point until time ran out. The game finally came to a close - FT L29-36.

Summary: It is clear this game is about confidence and momentum, and we play better when we have both - there is no doubt everyone did their bit today, but we probably had opportunities to do better. While the coaches will probably be 'satisfied' with securing 2 Bonus Points (primary essential league focus based on our previous recent performances), I think they will probably have noted that we allowed the opposition to regain control of the game at a time (10 mins) when the dice were effectively cast against them - so in the last 5 mins when the odds were heavily stacked in our own favour, we found ourselves at the wrong end of the pitch defending a hard-won losing bonus, instead of driving home a potential momentum advantage to achieve the Draw ...if not a Win! #closinggamesout

Bottom Line: Although we coped well today (Second Half) - There is no doubt we are still missing the heavy ball carriers we started the season with, and we lack some attacking pace in the backs as we try to regain from our attritional injury list - hopefully we might see some of the longer absentees returning soon, certainly two of the characters are now back in training. If you haven't done the math's, then a cursory examination of the table positions highlights we should probably be ok if we can get to 45-50+ points, but those teams below us in the league are now gathering momentum and moving up to within striking range, some are even gathering winning form as they recover their mojo and start to take scalps. As such from our perspective, if we want to guarantee staying up, we are going to need every bonus point we can get - they will all count - these next few games (March) are going to be absolutely key and while securing a win has been somewhat difficult in this new year period, we now need be focused on some pretty significant battles ahead, ones where we will need to generate a fully fit team delivering highly a coherent performance that is competitive enough to challenge for a win or at the very least secures every bonus point we can muster.. one thing for certain - there's going to be no 'dead rubbers' in this league over the next 7 games.