A tough reminder of the league Civil Service are playing in this season Portsmouth showed what they had learnt last season when they narrowly escaped the drop with a good late run. Rough and tumble was the order of the day as Portsmouth used their muscle to turn over the ball and although agricultural in the forwards the backline showed some good open play, making Civil Service pay dearly for any sloppy passes or dropped ball, which were seized on by the quicker thinking players of Portsmouth..
The game started at a fast pace with Portsmouth forcing a penalty after 2 minutes 3-0 from the restart Civil Service lost the gather which was passed quickly to the 10 who had seen the space kicked through chased by the 11 who scored 10-0 less than 10 minutes. Civil Service battled hard and were making good progress but again were hustled off their ball leading to Portsmouth’s 14 dodging flailing tackles to score 15-0. Civil Service certainly had the better run of play leading up to half time but just could not get the break through and lost another try on the death of the first half 22-0.
Second half Civil Service opened with a promising start spending a period pressing Portsmouth but against the run of play at this point allowed Portsmouth yet again to steal the ball and break away 29-0. Civil Service returned to the job in hand battling hard to gain territory and on the Portsmouth try line the Portsmouth forwards won the ball and the backs stormed up the pitch to take another score under the posts 36-0. Civil Service were giving a good account of themselves but had to play high risk rugby and it cost them dear as another missed opportunity to score reversed, for Portsmouth to score again 43-0. Civil Service never say die attitude staged a surprise final 10 minutes scoring 2 tries in the last period of play 43-10 taking the gloss off Portsmouth’s good win and causing the baying support to be silent for once during the game. Civil Service have a lot of work to do, they are close, but will have to tighten up the errors to stop giving away easy points and gain some in return.
PT