Sat 12 Nov 2022
Resplendent in the bright pink of the new Exiles shirts Redditch started as brightly as the low sun at their back and showed much promise in the opening exchanges.
As the kick off hugged the touchline the visitors did not handle the dipping ball and the sun, for Redditch to set up a driving maul to the line, which they failed to convert to points.
As Keresley failed to clear their lines Redditch took a tight head for James Mills to exploit the blind side and feed Clarke Parker to cross for the first score.
Keresley responded with a period of sustained pressure only relieved by a penalty kick to Redditch. Following a stoppage Redditch won the restart scrum and kicked wide to find skipper Aaron Atkinson bursting through to take the ball on the full and, after a trademark handoff, to race through to score another unconverted try.
At 10-0 Redditch were looking comfortable. However Redditch failed to deal with the kick off allowing Keresley to take control eventually scoring wide on the left.
Redditch sent the kick off aimlessly to mid field with no chase and Keresley said Thank You very much and scored under the posts to go into the half time break 12-10 in front.
And so the second half contimued with Redditch competetive at scrum and lineout but totally unresponsive to turnover ball by Keresley. Defensive lines were slow to se up, and we slid off tackles allowing Keresley to score many soft tries.
That said we showed some good attacking skills and scored a further 4 tries ourselves including Aaron's second when he collected a nice return pass from winger Harvey Habgood to have the final word.
Though we showed good improvement in the forwards we did not protect the gain line allowing the visitors too much space to set up their skilful and speedy backs and run out easy winners by 43 to 34, with Redditch earning the try bonus point.
We now have 4 away games in succession to take us up to the Xmas break.
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