As last season, Trowbridge faced a challenging start to their campaign with a visit to Allington Field against last season’s runners up Chippenham. In their first attack, the hosts conceded a penalty which Tom Weaver kicked to the corner and from the resulting line out, last year’s skipper Max Day was driven over to open the scoring for Trowbridge. Soon after Weaver increased the lead to 8-0 with a penalty. The teams both played open rugby until a threatening diagonal kick from the hosts led to the Trowbridge defence being unable to clear and Chippenham opening their account with a try celebrated by the loud public address system for not the first time. This repeated itself every time the hosts scored. A further try was recorded before referee Bretton King penalised Chippenham several times allowing Trowbridge to break away. There were five more penalties from indescretions by the hosts before the interval, converted by Weaver when the score had moved to 23-12 to Trowbridge.

Ollie Shrubb appeared on the right wing to replace Ajay Momi for the second half which started evenly with Chippenham’s Jack Smith and Weaver exchanging penalties, but Chippenham realised they needed to up their game. They scored two converted tries making the score 31-26, before Trowbridge replacement Archie Robertson substituted at fly half when Weaver withdrew. Sensing the danger from the Chippenham scores, Trowbridge attacked and this resulted in an excellent backs move finished off by Robertson, and ex Chippenham wing Alex Christopher was released to outpace the Chippenham defence to score after another good backs move. Neither try was converted.

As the match was drawing to a close, Chippenham scored another converted try and a penalty (now 39-36) as play went into injury time but Trowbridge spread play to the right for Trowbridge winger Ollie Shrubb to go over for a try to make the score 41-39 2 minutes into injury time, but there was still time - about four minutes more for Chippenham to force a line out five metres out. Trowbridge conceded a penalty and wing Brown together with the Chippenham pack was forced over to the delight of the Chippenham support.

Both sides agreed afterwards that this match could have gone either way and both sides should compete well in the league based on these performances. Chippenham’s pack is not as formidable as they were at home last season, and Trowbridge have certainly narrowed the gap between the clubs since those matches. It will be interesting to see how they progressed in later matches starting with hosting of Devizes next Saturday at Doric Park. They have moved over from the Southern League, which covers the area east of the Severn League and were edged out by Thornbury in their opening match last Saturday by a score of 34-30.