RUGBY: Worthing captain James Arthur's weekly column (November 12)

Alex Nielson returned from university to play on the wing, Mark Adams made his debut in the centre, while Sean Bennett, aka House, started in the front row.

After a long journey of just over four hours, we arrived in Bristol, but the coach trip was not without a little humour.

Let it not be said that private education has its pros. However, when it comes to educating a prop in geography, I'm not sure it succeeded.

Quoting our young prop, Max Maidment "if you wish to take a trip to Jersey, you will now find it located on the Isle of Wight".

The two tries of the game came from the locks, Charlie McGowan and Joe Launchbury. But careless penalties and a try meant we went into half-time 11-10 down.

Midway through the second half, the lights went out and we conceded two tries, a conversion and a penalty in the space of four minutes to seal our loss, 26-10.

After this, the character of the team came through and we dogged it out and defended well to stop them scoring the bonus try.

We managed to finish strong as well '“ camping out in their 22 for the final part of the game but, unfortunately, we were not able to convert this into points.

We did not get through the game without injury. Chris Meddings was taken off with a leg injury and we all wish him a speedy recovery.

Worthing RFC seems to be suffering from the same fate as many other clubs throughout the country, including the top team, England.

We now have at least 10 players out through injury and several more who are carrying injuries that, in a perfect world, would be rested.

It is a problem that is receiving a lot of press with the game coming under scrutiny. It is one of those problems that has no real answers but is one we need to somehow address.

The physio team are doing an amazing job and are having to work overtime to keep us all functioning and trying to get players back to being able to play.

The results this weekend saw a shock win as Barnes beat Richmond. The other results of consequence were that Bridgwater, Henley and Lydney all lost, and this meant we dropped one place to 11th.

Our next match, at home to Ealing on Saturday, will be another tough game and we hope to see as many of you there supporting us as possible.

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