Farnham U16 scraped a 5-0 away win over recently promoted Dorking B on a clear and windless day.  The gap between the two sides was far greater than the score suggests.  Farnham were dominant up front winning all their set piece ball (save for a couple of throw-ins adjudged not straight) and rucking and mauling to good effect.  Whenever Dorking got the ball, they made little progress as Farnham’s  tackling – a hallmark of all this teams performances – help them up.

However, Farnham were consistently naive with what they did with all that possession.  There was no finer example of this than at the end of the first half. The Dorking line was under threat and a penalty to Farnham was awarded bang in front.  With the score at 0-0 and the slope to our advantage in the second half, to open our account with a shot in front of goal would have been the thing.  However, rather obvious tap-and-go options were taken.  The Farnham runner was soon overwhelmed and pushed back albeit to force Dorking to soon concede yet another penalty.  This happened three times and each penalty was successively wider and further from the posts.  The eventual shot at goal was missed.

Throughout that first half and many times in the second half, a number of Farnham players reverted to mini rugby thinking and thought they could run through the entire defence themselves ignoring the support that was at hand.  Once, just once, the ball was spun down the line and the Farnham wing got a run.  The pack was in support at the tackle, secured the ball, moved it quickly through three sets of hands for the hooker to trot over pretty much unopposed.  That was the only score, and pretty much the only rugby of the game.  The team seemed happy to leave the idea of moving the ball on the training park where they have spent many hours practising it this season.

Despite these frustrations, the Farnham boys must take much credit for their spirit and determination.  After all a win is a win.