Before Norton’s home game, Jayla Wilcox, from Simple Recruitment, presented the team with their new shirts. Simple Recruitment have sponsored the club for a number of years.

Norton welcomed the Marlborough team to Norton Down with some ferocious tackling in the first few minutes from centre, Mitchard and flanker, Button. The visitors survived this onslaught and took an early lead through a penalty goal.

The home side soon made the most of the slope by kicking to the corners, flanker, Sawkins, scored Norton’s first points, making the most of a catch and drive. Button soon added a second try, but Taylor couldn’t add the conversion for either try.

The sides then traded penalties before Marlborough scored their first try. A misunderstanding in the home defence allowed the visitors to break up the left hand wing and score under the posts. The conversion brought the teams level, 13–13 at half-time.

Now playing up the hill, the home side picked up the pace, intending to get the first score of the second half, but unfortunately, the ball was spilled right on the Marlborough line. The defending team reacted the quickest and spread the ball to the opposite wing and scored their second try, covering the full length of the pitch to capitalise from the Norton mistake.

The team set about correcting this and were soon pressurising the Marlborough line with the forwards dominating the set piece. It looked like their Captain had scored, but the referee had already awarded a penalty try, Ben Taylor added the easiest conversion.

Marlborough were now forced to repeatedly infringe and a yellow card reduced the team to fourteen. Briefly, it seemed, Norton would not be able to take full use of their numeric advantage, as the referee insisted that they scrummaged seven against seven. The referee quickly realised his mistake and the home side took the advantage, with fly half, Ben Taylor, scoring three penalties and opening a nine point lead.

The Norton team were now confident of the win, as the clock was winding down, but they still kept playing to their strengths, with Fear ruling the line-out. They kicked again to the corner and set up yet another driving maul from a line-out. Captain Denning was in the driving seat and had the easiest of scores as he just dropped on the ball as the forwards drove over the line.

The visitors’ resolve was now broken and there was just time for one more attack, collecting the ball from the restart. It was quickly moved to Mitchard, who capped a fine game by bursting through the tiring defence running nearly half the length of the pitch to score under the posts, Taylor added the extra points to end the game 41–20. A late change due to an injury to Jack Rowles saw Luke Murphy and Jason Holmewood play their first league game for Norton.