DESPITE making an excellent start, a depleted Basingstoke RFC fell to their fourth successive London One South defeat at Down Grange on Saturday.

’Stoke were 13-0 up inside the first 20 minutes but fell away as the game went on, making a succession of errors to allow their visitors to get a foothold.

The hosts went into the game with a severely depleted squad. A total of 27 players were ruled out due to injury and unavailability, meaning that five young players were handed debuts.

Despite this, Basingstoke started the game well. A Ryan Travaskis penalty from the halfway line put them ahead, while captain Freddie Gleadowe took advantage of a mistake by the visitors to touch down under the posts soon after.

Trevaskis slotted the conversion and then kicked his second penalty of the day to put the hosts well ahead.

Having got themselves into a commanding position, ’Stoke began to make errors, continually putting themselves on the back foot, while a fussy referee hindered the flow of the game.

Hove got their first points on the board with a penalty and added a try just before half-time, cutting the deficit to just five points at the break.

The pattern continued in the second half, with Basingstoke continuing to make errors and inviting pressure on themselves.

They have Chris Guyatt sent to the sin-bin and Hove were able to get their tails up, running in three tries to lead by 10 points with 15 minutes to go.

Dave Byett took advantage of some good work by the forwards to touch down, reducing the lead to five points, but the visitors almost immediately kicked a long-range penalty to extend their lead, securing a 26-18 victory.

Head coach Will Croker said: “Our plan was to get off to a fast start and get into the lead, which is what we did, but we never killed them off and allowed them to edge their way back into the game.

“It certainly didn’t help that we had so many players making debuts because when the pressure came on, they had not experienced it as a group before.

“We were disappointed and we seem to be saying the same things after every game at the moment. When we are good, we are fantastic, but we are struggling to kill teams off. It’s frustrating because we should not be losing to these sides.”

Basingstoke: Guilfoyle; Woodhouse, Gleadowe, Byett, Whitby; Travaskis, Wilkinson; Eaves, Bird, Turner, McDonald, Hart, Burns, Guyatt, Davis. Reps: R Kochanowski, McDermott, Lawal.