Rams visited Rotherham Titans on Saturday with the ex-premiership club struggling at 3rd from bottom. The visitors feared a backlash from their Yorkshire hosts who had lost their last 2 home games. In the first 10 minutes the vocal home crowd got behind their team who started the stronger and took the lead after just 2 minutes when fly-half Sam Hollingsworth slotted a difficult penalty. Rams responded and on the 13th minute put together a series of passes that found Jamie Guttridge out wide and an exquisite backhand offload from the lock put Connor Hayhow in for his 1st try of the afternoon, Will Partington adding the extras to give Rams a 7-3 lead.

Hollingsworth reduced the deficit shortly after with another well taken penalty but Rams responded with an outstanding counter. A quickly taken lineout from Conor Corrigan put Will Partington in space and the fleet footed fullback danced through two missed tackles to find National 1 debutant Kieran Leicester out wide and a nice turn of pace followed by a superbly weighted pass from the outside centre put Conor Corrigan in space for the winger to finish the series of moves that he had started. Partington converted and Rams took a 14-6 lead on the 20th minute. A further successful Hollingsworth penalty closed the deficit on the 33rd minute. The score stood 14-9 to Rams at the break.

Rotherham were looking anything like a basement side occupying 3rd from bottom. They carried the ball hard and retained possession through many phases, which put Rams under tremendous pressure at the start of the 2nd half, but the Reading men’s stoic defence remained firm and when they visited the home sides’ 22 in the 56th minute a decisive move from the base of the scrum, saw skipper Robbie Stapley pass to scrumhalf Ollie Cole who found Hayhow running a hard line to crash through the Rotherham defence for his 2nd try of the afternoon, Partington again converting to give his team a 21-9 advantage.

The men from Yorkshire refused to lie down and again hammered away deep into their opponent’s half. It took doughty defensive from Rams to withstand the onslaught which, at one time, resulted in a string of 25 continuous phases which was only ended when outside flanker Tom Vooght made one of his textbook turnovers.

But the win was more or less sealed on the 72nd minute when Rotherham made a mistake at the base of their own scrum and quick thinking replacement scrum half Jack Moates kicked the ball deep into the home side’s territory for the outstanding Hayhow to chase the ball down to secure a well-deserved hat-trick for his afternoon’s hard work. Partington made the result even more secure with a brilliant touchline conversion to give Rams a 28-9 lead.

To Rotherham’s credit they came back yet again and kicked a late penalty deep into touch and from the lineout on Rams 5 metre executed a clinical catch and drive to give Anthony Maka a well-worked try that his team richly deserved. Morgan Bunting slotted a fine conversion from the whitewash to make the final score 28-16 to Rams.

Rams defensive coach Danny Batty was pleased with his side’s efforts but felt they needed to improve on some sloppiness in the 1st half “I wasn’t entirely happy with the way we defended in the 1st half” said Batty “but we were much better in the 2nd half and did well to keep out a Rotherham team that carried hard and kept the ball well”.

Rams Director of Rugby Seb Reynolds also commended his team’s performance “I was very pleased for Connor [Hayhow] today. He has come to us this season and made a big commitment to what we do and he has worked very hard and thoroughly deserved his hat-trick” and Reynolds went on to pay tribute to his squad “We had to do a lot of reorganising today and it’s a great tribute to the team that players can come in or be moved around and still perform. Kieran Leicester made his National 1 debut today and I am so pleased for him because he has been with the club for 20 years”. Reynolds went on “and Drew Humberstone has been fantastic standing-in for Alex [Seers] at fly-half. Alex is a class player and any side is going to miss him, but I think the way Louis [Ellis] and then Drew have filled-in over the last 4 weeks is incredible”. When asked what he thought were the chances of 4th placed Rams closing the gap to leaders Richmond, Reynolds made it clear that league position simply doesn’t feature in his plans “We’ve got a great coaching and S&C team and a fantastic squad of players. Of course we want to do well at this level but we are also enjoying the journey because we are meeting lots of new clubs with brilliant support and facing new challenges each week. So we take things each game at a time and we will do that right through to the end of April”.

This week Rams welcome back old National 2 rivals Old Elthamians to Old Bath Road. Kick-off 2pm.