Hurricanes Start New Season With Defeat

Sandown and Shanklin RFC lost 11-25 to hosts New Milton and District RFC in the first match of the new season.

A minute silence was observed before kick off at the Fairway Ground following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

The home side started brightly as early pressure resulted in Harvey Kirby kicking a penalty to go 3-0 up after a quarter of an hour.

The Hurricanes looked to extend their lead, however, New Milton were clever and looked to disrupt the hosts momentum.

A strategy which soon paid off as a pass was intercepted for the New Milton centre to streak home and score and followed up with a successful conversion to make it 3-7.

Sustained pressure from the hurricanes resulted in another penalty, which Kirkby kicked to cut the deficit to 6-7 at the half time interval.

Following the half time break, New Milton started the more energetic and eventually managed to extend their lead, again exploiting Sandown and Shanklin's mistakes again to score a try in the corner, 6-12.

The home side struggled to break the resilient New Milton defence.

Despite the tireless work of the Miselbach brothers and Sam Rees, the home side could not breach the visitor's defensive line.

As Sandown were banging the door down, a forced pass was intercepted once again and scored to make it 6-17.

This was shortly followed by another hurricanes error leading to a penalty to New Milton, 6-20.

The hosts did manage to cut the gap with a well worked driving maul working up to the try line and allowing Darren Carew to dive over and score, 11-20.

The away team did manage to cap off the performance with one further try in the dying moments of the game, 11-25.

Damien Marriott, Director of Rugby, said:

"Really disappointing to lose our opening game of the season, although congratulations to New Milton, who were deserved winners on the day, their defence was excellent.

"We have plenty of positives to take from this that we will work on in training and I'm certain the lads will learn and improve from this game."

Sandown and Shanklin are on the road next week to Millbroook RFC on Saturday September 17.