Civil Service, strengthened by a number of players returning from injury, made a good start to the New Year with a home victory against London Scottish. In wet and windy conditions at Duck’s Meadows, the score-line somewhat flatters a London Scottish side who needed to borrow Lee Donovan for the first half an hour to make up a full team. If it hadn’t been for a number of squandered chances, and dropped balls with the try-line beckoning, the difference would have been much greater.
Clarkey, making only his second start in a Civil Service jersey, opened the scoring with an early try, finishing off a well worked move out wide. Shortly after PJ powered through the Scottish backline to touch down under the posts. The Service pack were making mincemeat of the Scottish forwards, and the backline was showing a surprising amount of enterprise despite the weather.
At this point the spectators were probably thinking that it would turn into a rout. Despite this strong start however, Service went through the first half lacking the killer instinct, and were probably not helping themselves by trying to play a barbarian brand of rugby with long passes and offloads going to ground.
Service started the second half in much brighter form than they showed in the run-in to halftime. The backs continued to make telling breaks, with Ali, Searge and PJ cutting through the Scottish backline, however even in the wet conditions some of the finishing was poor. The forward pressure began to show in the second half and two tries came from scrums close to the Scottish line. Victor scored by pouncing on loose ball that squirted out the back of a Scottish scrum and Dan touched down after the pack pushed a scrum over the Scottish line.
London Scottish did have a spell on the front foot towards the end of the game, however good defence by Service in the tight kept the visitors scoreless. Right at the death Calum Morris managed to squeeze in the corner to inflate the score line as he attempted to make up for missed chances earlier in the game.