Worthing RFC captain James Arthur’s weekly column (October 21)

LAST week took us to Canterbury to play the city side.

After a number of injuries sustained at training on Thursday, the team was much changed from the published one.

We lost Steve May to a shoulder injury, Matt Miles to a reoccurrence of his ankle problem and Paul Dunkley to a nasty head injury. So, with all of that, we welcomed Oli Luke in to make his first start for the first team, Finlay into the second row and Sam, Stuart and Shane onto the bench. I had also recovered and started in the back row.

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Anyone who has been to Canterbury Rugby Club will know about the slope on the pitch and the prevailing wind that seems to always kick up around 3pm on a Saturday.

I lost the toss (again), and with Canterbury deciding to play up the slope with the wind at their backs the game kicked off. We started brightly and went on the attack, after some good interplay between the forwards and backs, Canterbury were forced into some foul play – the result being that Matt knocked over his first three points of the afternoon.

Unfortunately, Canterbury scored the first try of the afternoon – a kick to the corner and an effective catch and drive saw them go over.

Again, we had a mixed afternoon defending that particular tactic. At times stopping it at source and other times allowing them to get a rumble on.

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We did score next. After a charge down, Greg controlled the ball well and touched down. Jamie then went over, closely followed by Alex, to take us to a 22-5 lead after 20 minutes.

Canterbury came back into the game following the sinbinning of a Raider and scored first out wide and then again through the forwards with another catch and drive. The half ended 22-15.

With the wind at our backs, the tactic was to kick long and force Canterbury to play from deep and to trust our defence.

We scored the bonus point try after some great build-up work from the forwards created the space for Greg to run a great line and score his second try.

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The only real blemish on the half was allowing Canterbury to score their fourth try and claim a bonus point.

But, in the end, we ran out comfortable winners. Again, with things to work on at training but also real positives – not many teams go to Canterbury and come away with a bonus point win.

Last weekend saw some big scores. Southend beat Newbury by 100 points and Taunton beat Clifton, scoring 61 points in the process.

The result of the weekend goes to Richmond, who beat Jersey. The other wins went to Ealing, Henley, Lydney and our opponents this week, Dings, who beat Shelford.

We hope to see as many of you who can make it at the Rugby Ground on Saturday for what will be another tough encounter.