Veseyans 1XV visited Harborne RFC in their third league fixture, looking to avenge a North Mids Shield defeat at the start of the season. Veseyans started well and earned a penalty from the kick off which they kicked into the corner and from the resulting lineout set up an unstoppable driving maul. Ali Booth controlled at the back for an easy try. The conversion was missed. The next thirty minutes were back and forth as both sides broke the defensive line but could not finish off opportunities. Harborne had to settle for three penalty kicks while Vesesyans replied with two from Matt Gillick. Leaving the score 9-11. With 5 minutes of the half remaining Veseyans ran the ball from their own half and went through a number of phases before the ball found Lewis Gaffney on the wide left who was able to fend off would be tacklers and gallop in from the 22 to score in the corner. The difficult conversion was missed leaving the half time score 9-16 in favour of Veseyans.
The second half was a stalemate affair although Harborne had the better territory they could not produce anything to breakdown resolute Vesesyans defence. On 62 minutes Veseyans were reduce to 14 men for a yellow card to prop Reiss Taylor. This resulted in a period of sustained pressure on the Veseyans try line but again the defence held firm, including holding up Harborne over the try line and at the subsequent 5 metre scrum pushing Harborne off their own ball.
With the team back up to 15 men Veseyans managed to put some phase together and get don the other end of the field where they finished the game off with a last minute penalty from Matt Gillick leaving the final score 9-19 to the Veseyans and denying Harborne a bonus losing bonus point. Mention must also go to Courtney Cummings and Jacob Hollins who both made their 1st XV debuts from the bench and contributed to the defensive effort and Veseyans win.
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