NEW MILTON II 21 WEYMOUTH & PORTLAND 12

THERE were no complaints from Weymouth & Portland coach Paul Harding after his side were beaten for just the second time in Dorset & Wilts Two South this season.

Harding’s men dropped from second to fourth following Saturday’s reverse and are now a dozen points adrift of leaders Yeovil.

While Harding felt New Milton were worthy of the win at the weekend, he knows that had the visitors taken advantage of all the pressure they had things could have been different.

“New Milton play a very disruptive game,” he said. “They got in amongst us at the breakdown and tried to stop us playing.

“When we did try to play we didn’t quite have the penetration that we’ve had in previous weeks.

“Their defence was really good and we expanded a lot of energy near their line trying to score.

“We had opportunities and could have won but they were value for money for their win.

“It was our first game for four weeks which didn’t help, but it was a fair result on the day and there were no complaints from us.

“We knew it was going to be a tough game because they were decent at our place.”

The visitors’ inactivity showed early on as New Milton punished some indiscipline to go 6-0 up thanks to a brace of penalties.

Things got even better for the hosts when an interception led to the first try of the afternoon, making it 13-0 inside 20 minutes.

However, Weymouth & Portland did reduce the deficit to 13-7 before the interval when Ryan Lewendon touched down and Bryn Llewellyn converted.

The next score was always going to be the crucial one and unfortunately for the visitors it went the way of their opponents.

Their second try made it 18-7 and another penalty increased the gap to 21-7.

There was still time for Weymouth & Portland to salvage something from the contest and an unconverted penalty try gave them hope.

But in the end they weren’t even able to rescue a losing bonus point and left Hampshire knowing the hosts had also gone above them in the table.

Harding added: “Our lineout functioned really well and Jonathan Mason had a great game after a long spell out.

“We were strong in the scrum with Tim Comben showing us what we have missed in that area.

“The set-piece was really strong but we had a few missing in the back row and we missed Joel Wilson’s cutting edge in the centre.

“Along with Jonathan, Joe Gibson was our standout performer, and Ryan Lewendon did well too.”