DORSET & WILTS 29 HAMPSHIRE 11

A TWICKENHAM final is in sight for the Twin Counties after a hard-fought encounter that, despite the scoreline, could have gone either way.

Dorset & Wilts now face a trip to Leicestershire in the semi-finals after winning this RFU County Shield Pool Three contest at Bestwall.

The Twin Counties held all of the aces in their pack and the visitors struggled to win any set-piece ball.

However, the Hampshire backs were always a threat and deserved the after-match praise of their manager Ed Neville.

The hosts ended up playing a quarter of the game with only 14 players after right wing Wais Navunidakua was sin-binned for a dangerous tackle and then flanker James Newsam also saw yellow for killing the ball in front of his own posts.

That was an incident which left Neville scratching his head as to why the referee did not awarded his team a penalty try.

The game had kicked off in near perfect conditions and, following a sixth-minute line-out close to the Hampshire line, Dorchester’s Newsam drove over to score.

The visitors opened their account courtesy of fly-half Robbie Searle’s 15th-minute penalty. He then followed it up on the half hour with his second three-pointer to put Hampshire 6-5 up.

After a series of scrums deep inside Hampshire territory, home number eight Steve King picked up and drove across the visitors’ line to score a try.

Skipper Dave Hogg added the extras to give Dorset & Wilts a 12-6 interval lead.

Down to 14 with Newsam off, a fine flowing move from the Hampshire backs saw centre Richard Buck cross in the corner to bring the visitors back to within a point.

But that was just about as good as it got for Hampshire as in the final quarter the stronger Dorset & Wilts pack took control and provided enough ball for scrum-half Dave Tonge and Navunidakua to run in late tries with Hogg converting both.

After the game, Twin Counties manager Matt Pallas said: “It wasn’t pretty and we have played better, but we deserved to win.

"The lads have come together and worked hard in training, and now we must focus on the Leicestershire match next week.”