Playing with the benefit of the wind, Crawley got off to a flying start. Following twenty minutes of intense pre-match rucking drills, Crawley’s Forwards confounded their coaches by completing a well controlled twenty-five metre driving maul, with Alan Burgin and Adam Allnutt at the heart of the action. Eventually, the ball was slipped out to Fly-Half, David Keyte to score a converted try. Several minutes later, Crawley went further ahead as Outside Centre, Richard Cork broke through the Heath defence to score down the right hand side.

Shocked into action, Haywards Heath responded with some good flowing rugby of their own. Their strong pack won good tight ball to set up several opportunities for their speedy Backs. Shortly before half-time, this led to a Heath try by Centre, Scott Pargeter to make the score 12-5 to Crawley at the interval. For the second half, Crawley replaced debutant Winger, James Connelly who had shown plenty of promise, with Damien Martin. Crawley also brought on replacement Forwards Amir Keshavarz, Drew Henley-Lock and Russell Boczek.

The Crawley Forwards played their best game so far this season and won the majority of line-out ball through good jumping by Stephen Weston and the ever-improving Adam Allnutt, to set up several good chances, eventually leading to Crawley’s next try.

Heath’s defence, which also changed at half-time, improved as the game went on, putting the Crawley three-quarters on the back foot. However, Heath spoilt many of their own chances through handling errors in the back line.

Strong running Richard Cork again burst through the Heath back line to score directly between and underneath the uprights. Keyte converted.

With Heath pressing for a further try, their Backs mishandled and, following several fly-hacks from Keyte and Cork and good support from No.8, Ricky Montgomery and Wing-Forward, James

Rossi-Ashton, Keyte finished-off the score.

Just on full time, James Rossi-Ashton forced his way over for Crawley’s final score following a series of scrums close to the Heath try line.

Not despondent, Graham Glenn, Heath’s Coach reckoned his side will have learnt plenty from the game to put into good effect in next week’s VS13s encounter with local rivals Brighton.