In a week where the squad were hit hard by illness and unavailability Havant were forced into making nine changes from the original selected team. James Doe came in at full-back for his first start as in the 1st XV and Tommy Horn had to be recalled having been out the game for three months and then to play hooker a position he has not played for several years.

From the kick off it was obvious that the set piece was going to be difficult for Havant and they struggled to find any first phase possession. Veteran Pete living, playing his first game at scrum-half since he was 18, was struggling on a sticky pitch to get the ball away from the base of either the rucks, scrums or lineouts. The lack of a forward platform was putting the scrum-half under immense pressure, and consequently the ball to Fly-Half Joel Knight often arrived along with several Heath players.

In the difficult conditions Havant struggled to find any pattern at all and it was Heath, who were playing the better rugby. Their simple brand of driving play to pull in the defence and then spread the ball wide was effective in the muddy conditions.

Heath scored their first try, after 15 minutes, from driving play close to the Havant line which they converted to make the score 0-7. Two minutes later a series of driven rucks in the midfield gave Heath the opportunity to break wide and a missed tackle on the wing left the covering full-back James Doe with too much to do and the Heath winger went in to score in the corner 0-12.

On 32 minutes Havant made a tactical change bringing on veteran prop Justin Powell to steady the scrum but it made little impact as Havant continued to struggle in the set piece.

With 10 minutes left in the half Heath scored a third try from a scrum on the Havant 22m line. The Heath Fly-half cutting inside the Havant back-row which pulled the midfield defence in - Heath then pushed the ball wide for another simple score in the corner. The score at the break was 0-17.

Jim White had to come off the field with a tweaked hamstring and was replaced by Dom Bellman. Havant started the second half slightly more brightly, a series of driving plays put them in position to strike, although they failed to convert this pressure into points. After 10 minutes of the half minutes in a blood injury to Justin Powell brought Tommy Horn back off the bench into the front row but when Bruce Neil suffered a leg injury Havant were forced to reshuffle the pack again with the patched up Powell returning and Horn moving to the back-row.

The game in the 2nd half was played mainly in the middle of the park in a dour encounter with two defences holding firm. On 63 minutes a Heath player was yellow carded for a blatant tip tackle but Havant again failed to push home their numerical advantage.

Finally after a sustained period of pressure the Havant pack bundled Heath over the line with Dylan Raubenheimer coming up with the ball. At this stage with Havant marginally in the ascendancy and it looked like a comeback might be possible, but this faint hope was killed off a few minutes later when Heath scored their fourth try from driving play close to Havant line. Final score 5-22.

This is a disappointing performance in a very difficult week for the club. Havant must hope that the sickness bug that has ripped through the team will clear for next week in what becomes an even more crucial fixture away at Cobham Havant's destiny is still in our own hands but if we don't start to convert pressure and possession into points others will take this control away from us.

Captain Joel Knight reflected on a hugely frustrating afternoon:

'We struggled to get any go forward, a lack of clean set piece ball meant we were always on the back foot. Poor quality possession meant the pressure was moved from 9 to 10 and the ball rarely got into the outside backs.'

'Much of what we did was damage limitation. The performance did not reflect the ability of this squad and the changes hit us really hard.'

'We need to bounce back next week and the game at Cobham becomes crucial. We will find out a lot about ourselves as a group over the next few weeks'