Whitstable ended their Shepherd Neame Kent 2 campaign in impressive fashion by inflicting the only home defeat of the season on champions Old Gravesendians.

Saturday’s win left the Blues in third – just outside the promotion berths – but player-coach Mal Graves said they had plenty to feel proud about this season.

He said: “Our aim was to get out of Kent 2 so in that respect we’ve failed but two years ago this side were bottom of the table on minus five points so it shows the progress they’ve made. We’ve beaten both the teams that finished above us (Old Gs and runners-up Royal Bank of Scotland) but we haven’t made it count in the games against the sides nearer the bottom.”

OGs had beaten an admittedly depleted Whitstable 39-12 on the opening day of the season at Reeves Way but in the return, the Blues were much the better side.

Playing up the slope in the first half, their defence was superb in restricting the home side to just two tries, the second of which came right at the end of the half.

OGs led 10-7 at the interval – Josh Booty’s try for Whitstable being converted by Andrew Huey – but in the second half the visitors were quick to pin their hosts back with the first of two Huey penalties levelling the scores.

Tries from Bobby Powell and James Garland , one of which was converted by Huey, moved them 25-10 ahead before OGs replied from the last play of the game.

Blues finished the season on 94 points – six more than last year’s runners-up Snowdown had earned promotion with – but Graves was philosophical about missing out.

He added: “We played well on Saturday but it was a bit late in the day. We knew when we lost at home to Foots Cray (47-29 on March 11) that it (promotion) was up for us but we’ve only lost four games compared with nine last year and we’ve scored over 300 points more than we did then (778 to 470), so there are a lot of positives.The average age of our side is 23,24 which is probably the youngest in the league so the squad is still developing. This is a club that needs to be playing a better standard of rugby and we’re not too far off. We just need to be more clinical in certain situations.”

Match Report - Credit to KM group