Tonbridge will not fear the Titans after last season

Taunton RFC are travelling on mass today to Tonbridge Juddians with the both the Titans and the Warriors playing their counterparts at Tonbridge.

Both of the Taunton opponents are going well with the Tonbridge 2nd team unbeaten so far this season winning 7 out of their 8 fixtures and drawing the other. TJ’s first team have won 8 out of their 11 league games, one more than the Titans and are placed one spot behind Taunton,thanks to the Titans bonus points.

The TJ’s will not fear the Titans as apart from the two teams that got promoted last season Tonbridge were the only team to do the double over Taunton. In this fixture last season Tonbridge ran out 26 – 20 winners thanks to a last minute converted try after Taunton’s Aron Struminski scored with just 3 minutes to go. If that fixture was close the return fixture was a completely different story where TJ’s inflicted the Titans heaviest defeat of the season in their last home game of the year. The score line was Titans 26 –66 Tonbridge with the visitors outscoring the Titans 10 tries to 4. Last season the 7 tries scored by the Titans over the two games came from Sam Brown, Lewis Webb, Aron Struminski x 3, Jack Claydon and Connor Banks.

With the Titans having lost their last two games with two completely contrasting performances they will be hoping that they can produce a performance like last week rather than the one they produced on the last away game. All though Taunton lost to the league leaders last weekend they did push them all the way. There are a couple of changes for the Titans from last weeks team.Sonny Haines gets the nod over Isaac Dalton and there is a bit of s shift around in the back 5 of the pack. Dan Ogden moves up to the second row in place of Barrie-John Chapman after his red card last weekend, Ben Oliphant-Thompsonmoves to 6 from 8 with Sam Prior taking the 8 shirt. In the backs Freddie Fraser comes in for Toby East. On the bench Andy Hamilton makes his first appearance of the season with Andy England & Charlie Williams keeping their places, Noah Sixton takes the last place in the squad.

Titans Team

1      Connor Baker

2      Chris Francis

3      Sonny Haines

4        Stu Persey

5      Dan Ogden

6      Ben Oliphant-Thompson

7      Jamie Fleming

8      Sam Prior

9      Jacob Nash

10    Lewis Webb

11    Oscar Kolowski

12    Freddie Fraser

13    Nick Mason (Captain)

14    Ollie Rice

15    Gary Kingdom

16    Andy Hamilton

17    Isaac Dalton

18    Andy England

19    Charlie Williams

20    Noah Sixton

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