London 2 South-West: There was little between Tottonians and Gosport & Fareham in an error-littered, stop-start game that never really got going and was dominated by the sound of the referee’s whistle.
In the end Totts just managed to gain revenge for defeat at Gosport Park earlier in the season by winning 16-13. The match never flowed and could have gone either way during a tense final ten minutes – but followed the pattern of the rest of the game with the referee the central figure.
Totts took an early lead when Paul Brading broke free and placed down under the posts to make the conversion simple for Dave Wood.
Gos were soon level at 7-7 when Wes Dugan crossed the line and Ryan Thorne added the extras.
Penalties made up the rest of the scoring – Tottonians were up 13-10 at the break and kept a three-point advantage at full time after kickers split the uprights one more time. Both sides had two players sin binned during the game.
Despite losing Gosport captain skipper Snowden was pleased with how his side played.
“I think we’ve saved our two best performances this season for Totts,” he said.
“We are building gradually and I think with that sort of performance we put in today we are a challenge for any team – it doesn’t matter if they are first or second.
“We got a bonus point and maybe we deserved a little bit more. We scrapped and scraped and it was very even and I wouldn’t take anything away from Tottonians because they played to their strengths.”
Tottonians coach Gavin Williams said: “It was disappointing that we wanted to play but felt that we were not allowed to. But the players kept their discipline to a large extent and in terms of the physical battle we were certainly not on the back end of it and probably deserved the win.”
League leaders Guernsey slipped up for the second time this season.
They were beaten at Totts last October but surprisingly came unstuck on their Channel Islands base on Saturday – beaten 31-19 by Effingham & Leatherhead.
