A squad of just sixteen made the long trek to Tunbridge Wells on the back of last weeks 77-7 win over Medway. Folkestone won the toss and elected to play with the sun on their backs and ever so slightly down the slope. The wind proved to be causing some early problems with the Wells fly half lobbing some very high balls towards the Stones pack which were hanging awkwardly. This side has exorcised its slow start demons now and soon got to grips with this little issue, with Tony Bass, Ed Funnel and Simon Petts taking charge of the kick receiving and on a number of occasions sending it straight back via Mike Gardner and the very strong back line.

It wasn’t long before the Stones side suffered its first drama, John ‘ The Tank ‘ Durrant began one of his bulldozer type sorties into the oppositions lines and suffered what looked like a fairly innocuous injury to his knee, it wasn’t minor of course and John left the field to attend the local A& E.

Ton Arnott came on and slotted into the centres for his first game of rugby since school ! Wide eyed and no doubt slightly nervous Tom performed admirably all game.

So Folkestone were at 15 and the captain’s dreams of playing half a game trying to protect his poorly injured ribs from last week were rapidly turning into nightmares, but I don’t like to moan !

This seemed to be the catalyst for the Stones to fire up, The first try coming from Jordan Godden who weaved through defenders at speed with support players all around him. The try was unconverted.

A line out in the Wells half was intelligently called by hooker Chris Donovan-Bailey received by Simon Petts without jumping, immediately fedback to the number two who set off for the try line, the hooker passed one defender to score left of the posts, the conversion was narrowly missed by Prop Ed Funnel.

Folkestone dominated the first half, tries from Jamie Slater, Rob & Mike Gardener added to the total.

From the very first scrum the Stones technique had the better of the larger Wells pack, Folkestone won every ball on their own put in and several against the head, praise goes to Gareth Webber, Chris Donovan-Bailey & Ed Funnel for brilliant control of their front row opposite numbers. The backrow of Ben Stringer, Mike Gardner and Nobby Clarke were like young gazelles up and off the scrums in ball carrying or defensive mode.

The half time whistle went with the Folkestone side 39-0 to the good.

Tunbridge Wells made some changes at half time ( oh the extravagance ), one notable one was to their tighthead position, a new one arrived from a pitch near-by and promptly took over as captain, “C’est la vie” as they say in France when they’re not crying into their wine !
It did momentarily disrupt Folkestone’s scrum and the first couple after the break were held by the home side. This wasn’t to last and the pack got back on top.

Folkestone did take the foot off the gas a little in the second half, fatigue and the fact we were winning comfortably meant Tunbridge Wells were able to run in two good tries, ( although Mike Gardner is pretty sure he dropped it after Adam Petley put in a good hit on the try line ) they were carbon copies of each other, the TW scrum half, who had a very good game, distributed to a powerful running centre to break through our defence.

Folkestone weren’t finished though and matched the tries with Tom Nunn and Jordan Godden scoring converted tries.

A very strong performance from a Folkestone side that used everything in the reserve tank for this game.

Team;

Webber, CDB, Funnel, Petts ( c), Bass, Clark, Stringer, Gardner M, Godden, Gardener R, Durrant, Thomas, Nunn, Slater, Petley A. Arnott.