A NARROW 13-10 late victory over Gosport and Fareham moved Petersfield up two places in the Hampshire Counties One League to sit in ninth place in the 12-strong table.

Gosport, who remain in fifth place after their defeat, arrived at Penns Place in expectation of a comfortable win against the struggling Petersfield (pictured in red above against Andover).

But in deteriorating weather conditions, Petersfield once again demonstrated their ‘never-say-die’ attitude against an equally-determined opposition.

For the first 22 minutes neither team could successfully penetrate their rivals’ defence, both holding firm, tackling any breakout to a standstill.

And while the attacks by both teams failed to cross the whitewash, mention should be made of Field winger Will Pritchard and full back Archie Whitear, a 17-year-old club Colt.

Both cleanly collected siege gun restarts and positional kicks. always taking the game forward.

Notable too were Field’s scrum half Elgar, fly half Nick Blumlein and centres Joe Atkinson and Jake Bosher, who worked hard to contain Gosport in defence and go forward in attack.

Throughout the match, Petersfield’s pack of Hobbs, Williams, Brown, Butcher, Morse, Jones, Sharrock and Orr held their own against an excellent and weighty Gosport pack in both lineouts and scrums.

Field’s defence held firm but finally a penalty was awarded against them .

Gosport, who could have elected to kick for touch, chose to convert from the spot.

This brought the score to 3-0 to the visitors, eight minutes before half time.

From the restart a knock on by Petersfield had Gosport setting an attacking scrum.

A well-won ball saw Gosport half backs carve through a surprised and wrongfooted Field defence to score a converted try, bringing the score to 10-0 in favour of the visitors.

Then a penalty close to the Gosport posts was cleanly executed by the returning Blumlein for Field’s first points of the game to make it 10-3.

Field added to their score after a cleanly-caught penalty line out saw the home forwards drive on in a disciplined and compact rolling maul.

They went over the try line to touch down and Blumlein successfully converted to level the score at 10-10.

With less than ten minutes left, a Gosport attack deep inside Petersfield’s half resulted in a penalty line out.

Field defended well under the cosh and were eventually awarded the put-in at a scrum.

Smart thinking and – despite the ball being like a bar of soap – quick hands launched Atkinson.

He charged upfield, stepping through four tacklers before offloading to Blumlein who kicked for the corner.

But the fickle breeze saw the ball float back infield for Gosport’s winger to catch cleanly.

He set off on what seemed like a planned move to play mid-field, but contrived to out-pace his own players in a run across the front of his own posts.

His bold bid to break out was brought to halt when the referee penalised him for ‘crossing’.

The ensuing kickable penalty was coolly taken by Blumlein for the score to advance to 13-10 in favour of Field and as such close off the match.

The replacements Will Cross, Gage Pestridge and Alex Evans all gave a good account of themselves.

On Saturday Petersfield visit Eastleigh, who are in second in the league.