All Blacks go down to controversial defeat (From Andover Advertiser)

Late drop goal robs angry Andover

12:00am Friday 1st February 2013 in Rugby

Andover 10 US Portsmouth 13.

Oakwood sponsored Andover saw their promotion hopes take a huge blow at Foxcotte Park last Saturday as they went down to highly controversial first home defeat of the season to near rivals US Portsmouth.

The frustration was palpable as the visitors completed the double over Andover in a game dominated by some inconsistent refereeing, which Andover felt too often went against them.

Three key decisions in particular infuriated the vociferous home support and ultimately decided the outcome of a game Andover had to win and deserved to win.

The first was the failure to award an obvious try to skipper Simon Preece, the second a yellow card and the third and perhaps most frustrating was the incorrect award of a winning drop goal to the visitors. Afterwards coach Andy Waite tried to be philosophical : “The referee is a young lad learning his trade and we have tried to give constructive feedback to his assessor about how it went for his ongoing development.” he said. “It was disappointing but we also need to learn that getting on at a referee is only going to make it worse, so perhaps we contributed to the problem.” “It’s also not his fault that we didn’t take some of the chances we did have and kicked posession away too often” he added.

Sadly for Andover it was one that got away as their forward dominance should have seen them win comfortably.

Inexperience showed however, as the wily visitors played the official far better and eventually ran off with the spoils.

Andover started well as they had been asked to do and pressed US everywhere. Chances came and went however as a generous interpretation of scrummage and offside laws allowed US to thwart Andover attacks.

Preece was then inexplicably penalised when he touched down and US cleared their lines.

The visitors benefited from several penalty awards in the Andover half and were successful with one and then enjoyed a good spell of pressure themselves.

Full report and more in Friday's Advertiser