Andover 28 Old Georgians 52

A backs crisis has finally hit Oakwood sponsored Andover as a shocking injury list caught up with them at The Goodship ground last Saturday.

Already a very experimental group, Andover suffered the further loss of the influential Ioan Gwynne Davies and CJ Feirn during this one and struggled to cope with the pace and guile of the opposition counter attacks.

Playing up the slope, Andover began with real intensity going through phases and running hard at the visiting defence.

After ten minutes of constant pressure Tom Waite sprinted through to score under the posts with Josh Gibbs converting.

Andover were looking good but then suffered the loss of Gwynne Davies to a very late hit from an opponent, not seen by the referee and almost immediately what cohesion they had in the backs was affected.

Andover had begun the game with debutantes James Jarvis at scrum half and Academy star Doug Armes at centre and Evan Gwynne Davies coming on to replace his brother for his first game of the season the changes and reorganisation were too much to cope with.

Georgians were soon gifted a try by a hesitant defence and in the process Feirn sustained an ankle injury adding to Andover's woes.

As Andover reeled Georgians took full advantage and three further converted tries followed added to by a penalty to leave them out of sight by half time.

A change of tack at Half time saw Andover try and retain possession better and after ten minutes the plan bore fruit as a penalty try from a scrum was awarded.

Perversely a yellow card at this scrum actually worked in Georgians favour as they were forced to go uncontested for the ten minutes which allowed them a foothold.

Able to run again at a confused Andover defence two more tries followed.

Josh Gibbs got one back for Andover which he converted himself before Georgians got their last score.

Andover had the last word with a try from Ali Donan after a good spell of pressure, but it did little to paper over the cracks of a disappointing afternoon.

Afterwards Director of rugby Andy Waite said: "We are just overwhelmed with injury and unavailability, especially with the backs and we are struggling.

"That said there were some good individual performance especially from James Jarvis and Doug Armes who looked really classy and up front the usual suspects gave everything."