Worthing RFC captain James Arthur’s weekly column (October 28)

We welcomed back Charlie McGowen into the second row, Shane Costigan, who started his first game of the season, and hooker Matt Miles, returning to fitness after a long lay-off for a place on the bench.

The 3.15pm start went in our favour with Dings probably still “on the bus”. Having said that, the rugby we were playing was some of the best we have played this year both in attack and defence.

We scored two early tries from Greg Sullivan and Finlay Coxon-Smith and then, after a period of Dings pressure where we were camped on our own line, we managed to break out and Rob went over after a well-worked lineout.

By half-time we were 18-3 up and looking good to, at the very least, claim a four-try bonus point in the second half.

But we didn’t start the second half well at all.

We allowed Dings back into the game through a combination of mistakes and poor decisions and at 21-20 it was looking like we may let our lead slip.

With continued pressure from Dings on our try line it was looking dangerously close. Fortunately, our defence held and Dings gave two kickable penalties away to allow Matt McLean to kick us to a 27-20 victory, with only an adjudged forward pass preventing us from gaining the bonus point in the last play of the game.

While we secured another win to take us to six wins from eight games it was a hard-fought game and one, where in the second half, we were poor.

But a win is a win and it’s a good sign that we can win and still be disappointed about the performance

The rest of the weekend saw wins for all the top six teams, with the exception of Ealing, who fell to second-place Jersey.

Richmond beat Old Albanians to take seventh in the league, while Clifton and Lydney came away with much-needed wins against Newbury and Hinckley respectively.

Saturday sees us travel to our close-rivals Henley, who are sitting two places above us in the league. Henley have made the same start to the season as us, winning six from eight, the only thing separating us being a bonus point.

This is always a tough and close match and we hope as many of you as possible can make the journey to Henley to support the Raiders in this important game.