A Statement of Intent: Hammers 2s Put Worthing to the Sword

There’s a particular kind of Saturday that every rugby player secretly craves. Not the grim, sideways-rain, one-score thriller that leaves you questioning your life choices in a cold shower but the other kind. The kind where the opposition arrive looking slightly uncertain, the first half ends before they’ve had time to find their feet, and by the time it’s all over, the scoreboard reads like a victory parade rather than a confession.

Saturday the 28th was that kind of Saturday.

Mostly.

Hammersmith & Fulham 2s welcomed Worthing Raiders ‘A’ to the fortress – and wasted absolutely no time in making their intentions clear.

From the first whistle, Hammers set about making themselves very much at home. The game settled comfortably in Worthing’s half, as if the ball itself had decided it had no particular interest in venturing north. Hammers pressed, probed, and generally behaved like a side with a point to prove – which, as it turns out, they very much did.

The tries came with a pleasing, almost metronomic regularity. Four of them before the break. All converted. Twenty-eight points on the board before Worthing had so much as adjusted to the occasion. It was the kind of first half that prompts a quiet rethink in the away changing room.

Ben Hibberd opened the account in the manner of a man who had been quietly waiting for permission. Chris Thompson followed – less waiting, more insisting – a man who approaches the gain line less as a suggestion and more as a personal affront.With a few silky steps and a reach Max Dugdale adds his name to the scoresheet. Finally, the man who moves like a Slinky winger Sam Nursey weaves his way through defenders and dots the ball down in the corner to finish the half. Geoff Mahon, untroubled by the occasion, slotted all four conversions. Twenty-eight points. Nil to Worthing. Half time.

The second half, to Worthing’s credit, offered slightly more resistance – the kind that arrives when a side has nothing left to lose and everything to prove. However, early in the half the ball was chipped over the Worthing defenders and recovered by the Hammers backs after which the ball was given to Gregor Watson who turns on the gas and scores in the corner. Later in the half Sam Herron then adds his name to the scoresheet and Chris Thompson secures his brace.

And then there was the first incident.

Every match has one. That moment where the afternoon briefly forgets it’s a rugby match and remembers it’s also theatre.

Sam Smith – not the Grammy-winning, genre-fluid pop sensation, to be absolutely clear – took a boot to the face. Gracelessly. Deliberately. And entirely out of sight of a referee who, at that precise moment, appeared oblivious to the laws of the game.

This later led to Will Denny, who observed this injustice from across the pitch, covering the ground between himself and the offending player in a manner that suggested he had no interest in a measured conversation, and delivered what can only be described as an RKO. Out of nowhere. As they always are.

The effect was galvanising. Within moments, most of the players had reached their own conclusions about whether to get involved and unanimously decided yes. Order was eventually restored, words were had, and the match resumed with the slightly charged atmosphere.

Worthing, it seemed, had not entirely learned their lesson.

Late in the second half, Jordan Brown received a firm hand-off to the face – the sort of greeting that falls some distance outside the accepted conventions of sportsmanship. In the vicinity of a loose ball and with the referee watching attentively – Jordan’s boot made contact with the ball. Or, more precisely, attempted to. The ball, in the way balls sometimes do, was not quite where Jordan’s foot ended up. What his boot did find, with what the referee generously recorded as accidental, was the very player who had so recently introduced his hand to Jordan’s face, leading to a flash of yellow from the ref. Geoff finished with four conversions from seven – a return that invites the mildest of scrutiny but ultimately earns a nod; the important work, after all, had already been done long before the final whistle.

Final score: Hammersmith & Fulham 2s 45 – 10 Worthing Raiders ‘A’ Tries: Ben Hibberd, Max Dugdale, Chris Thompson (2), Sam Nursey, Sam Herron, Gregor Watson

Conversions: Geoff Mahon (4/7) Man of the Match: Oscar Newcombe.

Worthing will go home and regroup. They’ll find reasons and make adjustments, as sides do. But on this particular Saturday, in this particular postcode, they ran into a Hammers side that was in no mood for diplomacy – and even less mood for having their faces used as hand-off practice.

The 2s have made their statement. The season – and Worthing’s medical staff – is listening.