South disappoint in seasons opener

South, as always at the beginning of the season, were slow to come to terms with a spirited Ampthill side, awkward local conditions and the usual for this level a poor referee.
The home side were certainly up for the contest and were allowed to kill the ball at every opportunity by a referee unwilling to upset the home faithful. Having said that South also contributed to their own downfall with the usual failings of too often losing the ball in contact, poor decision making under pressure and an inability to take their chances.
Yellow cards for Dom Green and Mike March forced South to compete with only 14 men for a quarter of the game and they eventually ran out of steam in the last quarter when Ampthill scored two converted tries to add to a less than deserved flattering home scoreline.
How Ampthill escaped any of their players being sin binned is anybody's guess after at least five warnings for talking back to the referee, continual boring in by their loose head prop and a neanderthal lock forward who head butted any member of the opposition at every breakdown.
In the context of the game South were tied at 6-6 at half time after two Mark Lord penalties playing with the slope, but against the wind. The backs in broken play attacked from deep on a number of occasions and very nearly succeeded in scoring with Nick Griffin to the fore. On another day this strategy will reap its rewards as Ampthill were stretched to the limit.
In the second half South had their chances in the red zone, but failed to cross the whitewash while Ampthill gained heart from the lack of South success and reaped dividends resulting in their two tries from counter-attacking situations. Poor first up tackling from South didn't help the attempts to defend their line.
South gave debuts to Greg Jordan at scrum half and James Shepherd at prop.

Team: Clarke; Griffin, Armstrong, Lang, Harrison (Martin); Lord, Jordan; C. Bale, Cartwright, March (c), S. Bale, Antill (Hemsley), Bayley, Green, Jones (Shepherd).

Man of the Match: Nick Griffin.