Diss opened their league campaign with a poor display in deepest Essex. After a vigorous warm-up the visitors took the field full of determination but with one or two players in unaccustomed positions.

Westcliff 25 Diss 15

Diss opened their league campaign with a poor display in deepest Essex. After a vigorous warm-up the visitors took the field full of determination but with one or two players in unaccustomed positions.

Nevertheless they held their own and were somewhat unlucky to go three points down to a disputed penalty. Arran Bliss led the following onslaught on the home line and was justifiably awarded a penalty try when he was prevented from touching down his own kick ahead. Adam Williamson smoothly added the extra points.

Westcliff clawed back to within a point with a penalty but Williamson restored the margin with another penalty from distance. The same player had the opportunity to extend the lead but just pulled his kick wide. A series of injuries extended the first half by some 15 minutes and it was during the last few of these that, under severe pressure from the Diss team, the home defence kicked down the touch line and Grant gathered the ball in one movement and set off down the touch line. Two covering Diss players were impeded from tackling him but the whistle didn't blow and the result was a try between the posts which was comfortably converted to make it 13-10 at the interval.

Though there were several individual flourishes fromDiss after the break they came to nothing. The replacement fly-half for Westcliff, who was voted man of the match by the spectators, carved a great hole in the Diss defence to make a try for his left-winger to dive in in the corner.

Another Westcliff try followed to stretch their lead to 15 points and this seemed to galvanize Diss into action, but it was too little too late and the last minute try by Pete Shartie simply demonstrated what might have been.