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South London managed to keep their grip in second place in the league by the smallest margin after losing against Smallford in the final minutes. Storm showed probably their least convincing form of the season in a game they could not kill off. Each time they took the lead their concentration seemed to wane and Smallford came right back at them.

Storm started well as straight from the kick off captain Rob Mitchell took the ball and went round the outside of the entire Smallford team to score within seconds. Less than 5 minutes later young Chris Bevan dummied his way through the Smallford defensive line to score with a Rich Pitchfork conversion, which put Storm 10-0 after only 5 minutes. Storm’s luck suddenly changed with an injury taking out stand-off Shane McLaughlin, meaning a reshuffle in the Storm backs; Rich Pitchfork moving to 6 and Andy Penniceard making his debut at centre.

With Storm on the form they were in the last few games a large score looked as though it was on the cards but they let Smallford back into the game as their concentration fell off. Smallford clawed their way back into the game with two converted tries under the posts giving them the lead at 12-10. This gave Storm a wake up call and Rob Mitchell scored his second of the game to the right of the posts after good lead up work from the forwards took the score to 16-12. Penniceard then broke the line from five yards out after a great passing move from Charlie Crewe and Chris Bevan, with Pitchfork’s conversion the half time score was 22-12.

At the beginning of the second half a barrel-rolling trademark try from Louis Boschoff after Rich Pitchfork, Ben Hughes and Eric Stewart had all just failed to make the line took the score to 26-12. Once again just as it looked as though Storm had hold of the game Smallford came back into it. Storm did not help themselves with mistakes making sure they did not complete a set of six from this point on.

With 20 minutes to go Smallford scored 2 quick tries in succession before Rob Mangan on his debut at loose forward managed to take two defenders over the line with him to score a converted try to take the score slightly away from Smallford again at 32-24. Smallford jumped on another Storm error to score an unconverted try taking the score to 32-28. Colin Pritchard and Chris Mitchell then took the ball right to the Smallford line before a sniping run from dummy half let Charlie Crewe out wide. The conversion from Rich Pitchfork looked to put the game away from Smallford with only 10 minutes on the clock.

Once more Storm let it go and with only a minute left Smallford scored what turned out to be the winning try in front of the posts, giving them the easiest of the conversion to give them a 40-38 lead. Storm still had their chances but couldn’t convert them into points and the game was lost.