Kingston’s Rugby team will look to push on from an early win over London rivals King’s college to challenge for league success.
Kingston rallied in the second half to come out 19-12 winners against King’s College London 3rds with tries from Nick Macquisten, Lewis Tucker and Dave Holby.
KURFC started their season off with a well taken trying courtesy of second row Macquisten who picked up from a ruck and charged through some questionable tackling from King’s College.
However Kingston did not have it all their own way though.
Kingston captain Connor Cooper said: “We maybe lost our heads a bit after scoring the early try; I do not think that is arrogance it is just sometimes when you score an early try you sort of lose your head and think it is going to be an easy game.”
A prolonged lack of concentration from Kingston allowed King’s College to establish a foot hold in the game and push on to be in the lead at halftime.
The central London team going in to the break 12-7 up after two scores in quick succession.
The home side started the second half with the same intensity they started the first. Kingston’s ball carriers were eating up the yards do the middle of the pitch with the front and back row especially impressive.
Aggressive defence from KU sent the ball spinning over the try line forcing the visiting fullback to touch the ball down defensively.
The scrum lead to a score from Welsh number eight, Lewis Tucker, who again made Kingston’s forward power show by busting over from close range.
With Kingston camped out in the opposition 22 metre area and scrum-half Luke Scott looking sharp, it seemed like only a matter of time before they built on their two point lead.
However, with Kingston unable to take advantages of the opportunities out wide that their strong carrying created.
They kept the pressure on King’s College and were eventually able to pull away in the final quarter.
Blind-side flanker, Dave Holby, found his way clean through the defence for a simple touch down under the posts.
Scrum-half Scott was unable to add what seemed a simple conversion from in front of the uprights.
King’s College looked to come back in the dying minutes of the game, putting real pressure on Kingston, searching for an equalising score, but were unable to threaten the line in the dying phases.
Kingston captain Cooper said: “It was an intense match, it was good to get the win, we train with intensity and we know a lot of teams in our league cannot live with that.”
The captain wants to set high standards for his team and thinks winning the league is not beyond them.
The open-side flanker said: “That is definitely something we are looking to do, we have got a good intake of freshers this year which should give us the platform to push forward.”
Konstantinos Patas
Josh Smith