In warm autumn sunshine and on a firm playing surface, Winchester’s first team entertained a large crowd with a 12-try 78-5 victory over Basingstoke at North Walls Park last Saturday.

At the half-way point in the league season, they have won nine of their matches and lost only two, having scored 400 points and conceded 144, writes Tim Fell.

In the opening minutes, the Winchester pack put down a marker by shoving the visitors back in the first set scrum of the game. Scrum-half Connor Breen slipped up the blind-side touchline, and from the breakdown inside centre Will Taylor passed to his centre partner Jake Hiscock, who touched down in the corner. Fly-half Jack Phillips’s conversion attempt failed, but Winchester had five points on the scoreboard.

Winchester full-back Tom “Fozzie” Forster’s impeccable fielding of the high ball kept them in the Basingstoke half, and Hiscock registered his second try, again unconverted, in the tenth minute of the game. 10-0.

But Basingstoke were not going to roll over, and to their credit their heads stayed up to the very end of the match. But tries by Winchester second-row Will Davies and winger Miles Sampson, both converted by Phillips, meant that Winch had banked the try-bonus point and led 24-0 at the half-hour.

A second try for Sampson, converted, increased Winchester’s score to 29, but in a momentary lapse of concentration just before half time, they let in a soft try in the right-hand corner for Basingstoke winger Tom Jeffrey, the assist given by full-back Bradley Titcombe.

That was to be Basingstoke’s only score. The second half started with a flurry of Winchester tries, for No 8 and captain Matt Golding, Breen, Phillips, a third for Sampson, and a forward connoisseur’s one when second-row Matt Lown fed the ball to tight-head prop Jim Beavan, who had fellow prop Ben Turner on his shoulder to take his offload and touch down.

All this was keeping the water-boys from Winchester’s Under-13s squad busy running on and off. They boys had given a brief demonstration of their growing rugby skills at half-time.

A fourth try for Winchester’s Sampson followed, and the last of the match was scored by flanker Angus Adamson.

“It was great to see that front-row try”, said coach Gaz Martin after the match, “and Matt, Connor, Jack and Foz gave us such a good spine that we were playing chess with them”.

In the meantime, Winchester 2s beat Overton away 19-12.

Winchester team: Forster; Horger, Hiscock (v-c), Taylor, Sampson; Phillips, Breen; Turner, Wallace, Beavan, Lown, Davies, Dunne, Adamson, Golding (c)

Substitutes: Millard, Coles, Holdsworth