A huge improvement on last season's contest between these sides.

The final score in this match is not indicative of what was a fiercely contested and often bruising encounter at the Recreation Ground at Fordingbridge.  Fordingbridge have not been beaten at home in a league match for the past three seasons. In each of these years they finished second in Hampshire 1, so Alton knew that the task in front of them was difficult.

Alton started extremely well and after six minutes Alton’s heavier pack pushed the home side back in the scrum, with fullback, Adam Gallagher, joining the line to help set up winger Will Hamer to complete a superb backs try. Unfortunately Gallagher’s attempted conversion was missed.

The home team realised that they were in for a hard afternoon and it turned out to be that way.  Fordingbridge went in front when their centre picked up a pass superbly off his toes which distracted Alton’s defence and the move was finished by centre Dee Stone. Fullback, Mark Hammond, collecting the additional two points.

Although the visiting forwards controlled the scrum for most of the first half and scrumhalf Mark Crowther was held up on the line, Fordingbridge took charge of the loose play and their good ball handling meant that for the middle section of the match they moved the score board forward in their favour. With two further tries from prop James Gwynne and hooker James Greenwood, along with two conversions and two penalties from Hammond saw a half-time score of 25 – 5.

For the first ten minutes of the second half the match continued in the same vein with home winger Josh Merry and second row Harry Hitchings both scoring tries to secure Fordingbridge a bonus point.  Both tries were converted by Hammond.

At this point, it looked as if the score was really going to mount up against Alton. To their credit, however, Alton never let their heads drop and upped their game spending much time encamped in Fordingbridge territory. Twenty minutes into the half a penalty against the home side, for offside, was kicked by Gallagher.  Alton continued to pressurise and were unfortunate to give away a penalty inches from the home try line. Unfortunately, minutes later a certain try was spoilt by a forward pass.  Fordingbridge were reduced to fouteen men, when their No 8 was sin-binned following a series of offside decisions.

With the supremacy of numbers, Alton ran in two unconverted tries, the first when recycled ball from the forwards was sent along the backs line with winger Adam Gill adding to his hat-trick of last week and the second was a superb solo effort by Gallagher from his own 22m line. This took the score to 39-18 as the game entered its last five minutes. Despite Alton’s efforts to score another try to at least give them a try bonus point the last word went to home fullback Hammond with an unconverted try.

Alton’s head coach, Will Brewer commented after the game “as a squad we have made huge strides since last season, I’m proud” and forwards coach Gavin Evans added “good hard game today guys against a tough opposition in their backyard, massive effort, and very proud that we kept our heads up high and did not give up and gave them a good game".

The league stands down for a week. On Saturday 11^th October Alton entertain Bognor who have the same record as Alton, having played three and won two.Kick-off is 3:00 p.m. If Alton can play as well as they did this week then they should be able to reverse the big defeat they suffered away from home last season.

Referee - Chris Ings (HRURS).