A disappointed and sombre Calne walked of the Recreation Ground, on Saturday, wondering what had hit them. Despite a one man miracle, show form Guthrie Holliday, in the last 20 minutes, Calne were not at the races. A powerful and surprisingly strong Bridport side got stuck into Calne from the offset and went about making Calne’s big day a miserable one.

Calne made their now notorious slow start. Bridport seemed able to turn Calne over at will. Whilst the home team looked out of sorts and at times uninterested. Bridport opened the scoring with a penalty, as a slow to retreat Calne were pinged.

Calne started to wake, but were starved of ball. But fortunately Calne centre James Gladding was is no mood to let the Bridport threequaters run at him. He seemed to take great pleasure in dump tackling each of the Bridport backs to the ground in turn.

After trying, and failing, to find a weakness in Calne’s backline, Bridport changed their game plan. The ball went up the preverbal jumper and Bridport went about terrorising Calne’s front eight. Bridport were duly rewarded with a penalty try, following a professional foul by one of Calne front row, who spent ten minutes watching his team-mates from the sideline.

Then if things couldn’t get worse for Calne, influential flyhalf, Lewis Baker, made a break of two sorts. He sliced through Bridport’s set piece defence, straightened up to fix the covering scramble defence, but in a massive collision Baker had to be helped from the field with a suspected broken arm.

Captain, Andrew Donegan, offered a glimmer of hope to his team. His penalty, whilst down to 14 men and without the services of Baker lifted Calne. But Bridport remained composed and continued with their well planned and executed game plan. The visitors destroyed Calne’s normally rock steady scrum and started to off-load in the tackle, flummoxing the flailing Calne defence. Half time came as a welcome break to Calne with the scores at 3-10.

From the restart a full of confidence Bridport pinned Calne back and were soon rewarded with an unconverted try to extend their lead. Now Calne came to life and opened their game up and showed their ability and thirst for the game. But on one excursion into the oppositions half, a loose ball was picked up by Bridport’s winger, who proceeded to race in all 60 meters in front of him without a finger laid on him.

Now trailing 22-3 and sensing the game may now be out of reach, some of Calne’s quieter players in the game came to life and helped Holliday put on his dazzling show. His first try was the result of some great forward build up and some classy backline passing. He cut between two defenders and opened his legs and crashed through into the corner. The impossible conversion was nailed to the delight of the large home team crowd.

A shell shocked Bridport then looked on the ropes as Holliday took a quick tap 22 meters out and took pleasure in making the broken field defence look helpless, and scored between the posts, for Donegan to add the extras.

Now in full recoil, Bridport looked about to crumble. Calne threw everything at the impressive visitors. Calne’s forwards, who to this point had to play second fiddle to their opponents, looked league above them for the last few minutes. Calne’s fitness levels looked good against their tiring opponents.

Now camped on Bridport’s try line with just 3 minutes to go, Calne’s pack battered and smashed into the last ditch defence. But as Calne’s building frustrations would suggest, Bridport stayed firm and just managed despite there penalties on the try line in a row, to hang on for Southern Counties status, with the 17-22 win.

The game marked a final farewell for Holliday, who looks to make a big impression in London. Also for player coach Neil Watkins, who also is off to the big city. And lastly for Richard Kearney, also a player coach, who retires after a making an impressive mark as a player for the club. The club now hopes Kearney will consider taking the club forward, on the coaching front, in the next campaign.

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