Hertford have consistently finished just behind the promotion spot to National 2 over the last three seasons, so it was a good test of the Blues mettle.

Saturday was a day of mixed emotions, it was great to get the first national league game out of the way against a strong Hertford side. Despite the scoreline, I was pretty happy with the performance from the lads, it was quite clearly a game of 2 halves, in the first half we showed Hertford too much respect and allowed them to play with the ball. However - the second half was a different story, we dominated majority of set piece which gave the backline a good platform to work from and took our attacking mentality into our Defensive line also.

Moving forward, we now know what we will be up against on a weekly basis and know the standards we have to reach in order to compete at national level. We will continue to build on what we have and I have no doubt that we will only get stronger week in week out. A loss isn't the ideal start, but more than most clubs we know how important a point is and we will take it.

Frank Taggart
Head Coach
rugby@brightonblues.co.uk