Gosport and Fareham 34 - 10 Southampton

Southampton showed some moments of brilliance but ultimately fell to their first league defeat away to a strong Gosport and Fareham team.

Southampton started well and were working their way into the home twenty-two when a chance interception saw G&F run in from long range to open the scoring. A second try soon followed as Gosport used their big runners to punch through the Saints defence and extend the lead to 12-0. Gosport's pack put the Southampton scrum under pressure, which made it hard to create an attacking platform.

After a third try from Gosport, Southampton countered the threat by pressing harder in defence, forcing G&F into handling errors and optimistic kicks. But another break opened up their defence and put the left winger in for what seemed like a certain try, only to be brilliantly tackled into touch beyond the try line by Riccardo Scala.

With ball in hand Saints did look dangerous and after a well worked line out, Josh Fearon powered over to get their first points on the board. Jordan Dashwood added the conversion and followed this up with a penalty shortly after to narrow the gap to 17-10.

In the second half Gosport continued in much the same fashion, using their big runners to suck in multiple tacklers and looking for offloads. A penalty on the Saints five meter line gave them a chance to increase their lead but some brilliant defence led to a Southampton turnover and some good handling instead took them the length of the pitch to threaten the Gosport line. They were unable to finish it off though and Gosport were grateful to clear their lines.

As the game entered the final ten minutes, Gosport and Fareham forced their way over twice to take the game beyond Southampton leaving the final score 34-10.

A tough game against good, strong opposition, on a rock-hard pitch that somehow hasn't been rained for a while. Plenty of positives for Southampton though, who looked dangerous when they had ball in hand, committed in defence and look likely to cause problems for many teams this season.

Man of the match went to Jordan Dashwood who tidied up at the back of some messy scrums, put in some big tackles and proved typically difficult to tackle.