In a day of sunshine and continued good weather the battle hardened Romsey made the trip to Aldershot & Fleet rugby club for a game which of great importance in Romsey’s race for promotion and a chance for the Murrant brothers to play once again with the attractive ginger older brother regaining fitness from an early season injury, and the other coming down from university.

The game began with hard carries from both sides but Romsey gaining the edge with repeated infringements from Aldershot and Fleet resulting in multiple penalties. Romsey continued applying the pressure in their efforts towards the try line. Romsey’s continued hard carries led by captain Harrison Scott and his pack of rampaging handsome forwards, resulted in Romsey gaining a penalty to start the score board ticking with Ben Powell stepping up to slot the 3.

The kick off was gathered by these good looking behemoths in the Romsey forwards pack and carried hard and aggressive into the contact area. Aldershot continued to give away penalties resulting in their fly half receiving a yellow card.

An opening in play after continued forward dominance allowed for Ben Powell to place a perfect chip over the defence and the younger Murrant, using all his rugby knowledge gained from his older brother, collected the ball and raced in for a try.

Further positive play allowed for Romsey to once again have an opportunity to put points on the board with a line out close to the Aldershot line, a solid driving maul allowed for Ben Hoad to cross the whitewash and continue is excellent scoring run this season.

Cannon ball winger Ollie Soundy in an attempt to dominate the tackle area was given a yellow card for a high tackle on the Aldershot 15 (who was falling), with both sides now down to 14 men it soon became a more physical game. Unfortunately Romsey were guilty of some errors which allowed for the lumbering forwards of Aldershot to pick and go from close range to score a try. However after some dominant carries and well secured rucks, Dylan Scott proved to be wide awake for this game as he picked from the base of a ruck and tried to race away as quick as he could giving the pass to Murrant who returned the favour and allowed the younger Scott to score under the posts, with a poor ash splash attempt.

The second half kicked off with much the same ambition as the first with Romsey clearly keen to put Aldershot to the sword with dominant scrums and gain line success. Lewis Cartledge entered the fray making some excellent ground with aggressive direct ball carrying which eventually allowed for him to score beating 2 defenders in his path, despite Dan Murrant being open to his left and unopposed. The dominance of the mighty Romsey pack meant that centre Tyler Beardsley wanted in on the action carrying hard into contact and riling up the opposition fly half resulting in his dismissal from the game with a red card much to Beardsley’s delight.

Continued pressure on a tiring Aldershot defence allowed for the younger Murrant once again using his older brothers teachings managed to identify a large gap from the Aldershot defence and raced through to score in the corner marking his second try of the game.

The backs identified a gap on the blindside and exploited it with great skill, however, Jack Murrant threw a speculative pass that not even an international could have made caught to his older better looking brother who managed to play the ball back to Ben Hoad who ran through 3 players before being brought down with an unfortunate injury.

Subsequent infringements from a battered and weary Aldershot side allowed for Ben Powell to step up and slot another penalty with great ease.

The dominant carries and willingness of the Romsey team allowed for some excellent phase play resulting in Will Davies scoring his try which had been eluding him all game. Ben Powell continued his excellent kicking record scoring conversions for fun.

Romsey showed true character in defence and a willingness to make aggressive dominant tackles which Aldershot has no response for, limiting their attacking play and keeping them at bay. The game ended with a convincing Romsey victory and also without any offering from head coach Jason Berry to get some boots and Dan Murrant playing 3 different positions once and for all proving he is the best Murrant despite all the noise to the contrary.