In this opening game, sponsored by Tees in glorious sunny weather, both sides looked to play expansive rugby, with Stortford enjoying a decided edge over their illustrious opposition during the first half, despite losing scrumhalf, Alex Patton to injury with less than quarter of an hour gone, with Jimmy Rea moving in off the wing to take his place. Two or three times, the home side came close to scoring with some impressive, offloading rugby by both forwards and backs, but a crucial, last supporting player was missing, or a small mistake was made to snuff out the opportunities. Darlington also threatened occasionally but, once again mistakes were made and, despite the adventure and considerable skill shown by both sides, the scoreboard at halftime remained blank.

The second half was a very different affair, with DMP scoring a converted try after 3 minutes, when a mix up at the back of a sound Stortford defensive scrum was ruthlessly exploited by a series of powerful forward drives from the visitors, allowing hooker, Ralph Appleby finally to crash over the line, with Warren Seals converting. Stortford went straight back onto the attack from the restart and were awarded a penalty for a deliberate knock-on, which George Cullen converted. Within a minute, the home side was 3 points ahead through a penalty try awarded for a dangerous tackle, as Rob Duff touched down out wide, following an excellent break in midfield by James Apperley. The lead was widened to 6 points three minutes later, when Cullen registered another three points after two excellent tactical kicks by Tom Coleman and an excellent chase of the second had put pressure on the DMP defence to force a penalty at the breakdown. The visitors were not to be denied, though and took a one point lead on 54 minutes with a converted try from Seals, when advantage was being played for Stortford having needlessly pulled down a driving maul some 15 metres from their line. The flyhalf put in a clever chip kick inside the opposition 22 and followed up to field a tap back from one of his team mates to touch down by the posts, giving himself an easy conversion. Undaunted, Stortford battled back, forcing another breakdown penalty 6 minutes later and Cullen’s 3rd successful goal restored a 2 point lead. The game seemed to be over after 70 minutes, however, when the visitors scored the second of two tries in quick succession through Chris McTurk and Christian Georgiou, as their backs showed their pace in exploiting some tired looking tackling. The first resulted from some quick interpassing and the second came, when a threequarter cleverly spotted two Stortford forwards defending alongside each other in midfield and stood them up before bursting between the two to set up a supporting winger for the touchdown. Stortford showed great character, though to fight back again and some more good interplay by forwards in midfield led to an excellent try out wide to Rob Duff, well converted by Cullen after 77 minutes. This set up a nail-biting last few minutes, with Stortford on the front foot again. Another penalty was won in midfield and, spurning another possible 3 points for the draw, Tom Coleman put a pinpoint kick close to the DMP line. Stortford won the resultant lineout and launched a drive at the line, but were deemed to have gone over the ball, as a visiting player pulled back from contact, causing a home forward to fall forward. The resultant tap and punt to touch ended the game to give last season’s league runners up a narrow win, which could easily have gone Stortford’s way.

Stortford’s supporters will have been impressed by the performance put up by the whole team against many people’s favourites for this season’s title and the man of the match award could have gone to anyone of a number of players, but the BIT Solutions’ award went to Charlie Kingham, making a rousing return to the team after his stint at Loughborough.