With a mounting long term injury list and a few unavailable this weekend, with many preferring their ski boots to their rugby boots, Campion II's were down to the bear bones for the home fixture against Eton Manor. In the absence of so many forwards, Campion were forced to play three of our back line in the pack, Kev O' Reily lining out in the second row and Joe Arnone & Danny Ryan were shepherded in the art of back row play by Mike Carter. Making a welcome return after long term injuries were hooker Steve Lucas and centre Ryan Spurge.

Lynch,Lucas,Jones,Trapp,O'Reily,Joe Arnone,Ryan,Carter,Frost, Hallahan, Hobbrough, T Ronayne, Spurge, Slattery, D McEvoy and John Arnone.

The sniff of a Campion fixture clearly brings out the best in Eton Manor, they lined out with a very strong team which added to an excellent and finely contested match on a bitterly cold day with even a small snowstorm during the game. The match went down to the wire, Campion were 26 - 25 down when on the last play of the game Campion had a scrum in their own 22 with no option but to run. Unfortunately Campion suffered their only turn over scrum at this point and allowed the Eton Manor 8 to run in for a try of their own to give them a 31 - 25 victory.

Campion scored three excellently worked tries through Danny Mac, schoolboy wing George Hobbrough and Trappy. Pat Hallahan converted two and added two further penalties to bring the Campion score to 25. We were also unfortunate to have two tries disallowed for a double movement and a forward pass just before half time which on reflection would have given Manor a difficult task to rebuild in the second half. Campion can feel with the majority share of possession and field position they should have won this game, however Manors replacements made a big impact with their full back particularly impressive with Campion tiring.

MOM went to Danny Ryan who filled in for the forwards and had some good runs. Other contenders included Mike Carter, Trappy and Hobbrough who got through a lot of work out on the wing in cold conditions.

The next few weeks sees a run of home games against the third strings of Westcliff and Woodford and a second round cup match against Old Brentwood's. Given the number of players out for the rest of the season with long term injury we are running low on player numbers so can everyone make an effort to ensure they are available for the next three Saturdays of February. Please inform the team management now if you know you are unavailable for any of these games as the earlier the better. We want the run in to the end of the season to be a winning one.