This was originally billed as a triangular between Salisbury, Trowbridge and Marlborough.  But Marlborough pulled out so Salisbury A Team played a (2 x 20 min) match against Trowbridge.  The B Team were at the Winchester Festival.

Salisbury 2                 Trowbridge 3

I have often remarked that Salisbury tend to have better results in inclement weather; we tend to be degraded slightly less than our opponents.  The conditions on this November morning were ideal, and the effect on Salisbury’s performance was obvious.  Perhaps it was tiredness following a thrilling visit to Twickenham the day before (thank you Richard), or perhaps it was arrogance following a recent stretch of good form, but Salisbury failed to make its mark.  The team did not do well.

Trowbridge played well.  Excellent kicking helped them out of trouble on more than one occasion, and they mauled and ripped as well as Salisbury; the normal unstoppable-forces-of-nature of Jacob and Charlie were neutered.

In the first half Harry Mould opened the scoring for Salisbury, fed an easy pass by Ben Richards allowing him to wander gracefully over the try-line.  Trowbridge nearly scored, but the ball was judged to have been held up.  Trowbridge responded by scoring from a scrum near our own try-line, and then repeating the action soon after.  Ben Richards retired injured, followed soon afterwards by Edward Stanton.  Edward eventually went to hospital and is off rugby for a few weeks with a broken wrist.   Charlie Hewitt scored for Salisbury but Trowbridge merely scored again, re-imposing their one point advantage.

The second half was real end-to-end stuff with both sides having several exiting opportunities to score, but neither managing to pull it off.  Salisbury were running out of players as injuries came and went.

Salisbury ended up the losers, with hurt pride, which they unfortunately let show.  After a good long team talk the situation was partially rectified with some excellent training.