Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Big win sets Blues up nicely for crunch clash
Whitstable
Whitstable can take a big step towards promotion from Shepherd Neame Kent 2 on Saturday when they travel to Royal Bank of Scotland.
The Blues, in second, boast a four- point advantage over thirdplaced RBS and victory in south east London would give them a significant buffer with only five games to follow.
Player-coach Mal Graves was keen to stress nothing would be won or lost on Saturday but did concede a win would give Whitstable a vital edge in the run-in.
Graves, whose side are on a 12-match winning run, said: “It’s a big game, there’s no doubt about that but it won’t be all doom or gloom if we lose any more than we’ll get too carried away if we win.
“The boys have worked hard to get themselves into this position and it’s a game they are looking forward to.
“It’s far better (playing in this type of game) than having nothing to look forward to, which is where this club was a couple of years ago.
“I’ve been playing rugby for 20 years and only ever had two promotions, so they don’t come along often. I’ve told the players to enjoy the moment and grasp the opportunity.”
Graves said Saturday’s resounding 83-10 home win over struggling Erith was a good workout ahead of the game with the bankers.
He added: “Erith tried to make it hard for us but we played well and were clinical.
“It’s easy in these situations for players to get ‘white line fever’ and go away from what they would normally do but some of the team tries we scored were decent. Any team would have struggled to have contained us.”
Marck Olive, Ben Cliff and Will Reid all grabbed two tries with the others coming from Phil Costley, Josh Booty, Kieran Woolf, Tony Cairney, Sam Holness, Luke Bowers and Andy Huey, who also kicked nine conversions.