A really enjoyable day at Charlton Park, highlighted by a formal recognition of Dennis Attwood’s service to the club and then the undoubted try of the season, coast-to-coast from Reion Raybe, which made for a grand rounding-off of the league season.
Dennis Attwood’s retirement from the Presidentship was marked by a lunch and a presentation of a salver and decanter on behalf of the club. Doug’s Hursey’s speech outlined Dennis’s amazing 53 years playing (he had an ‘edge’) and administrative loyalty to Charlton Park and Kent, noting his nine-year spell as captain of Kent Clubs and 30+ years as county rep on the RFU Competitions sub-committee. Having joined the presentation before their warm-up the team then added some icing to the cake by beating visitors Cranbrook in a game far closer than the score suggests.
That Raybe try came towards the end of a first half in which Park did more defending than attacking. They led 5-0, courtesy of Alex Miller’s try on the blindside, when the ball found its way to Alan Knuckey, on as an early replacement for an injury to Connor. Behind his own posts and seemingly with nowhere to go, his delay on the pass to Reion gave him some space and he was off, round and through the would-be tacklers, leaving them behind once he had crossed halfway. It was spectacular even by Reion’s standards and, although they continued to attack, understandably seemed to deflate the visitors.
The second half started with the season in a nutshell: Charlton caught faffing about, kick charged down, try and game on. Fortunately it was not going to be significant. Park regained the ball from the kick-off, Terry and Ally McQuitty took it on and Alan Knuckey scored in the corner, Alex’s conversion from touch adding to the pain. His penalty increased the lead to 22-7.
Cazzer seemed to have knocked on but was stripped and Tommy Nightingale scored the bonus point and then some lovely left-to-right passing allowed Jack Hudson to glide through the gap to round things off.
As I said, Cranbrook probably deserved more. Their line-out completely dominated; the statisticians on the side thought we might have won two all day, and their backs ran and passed fluently. However, the scrums went the other way and Charlton defended really well, with one Tommy tackle preventing an almost certain try in the first half just before the Raybe pyrotechnics.

I have no idea when or where the next game, in a cup competition apparently, will take place: just how grassroots clubs are expected to plan ahead goodness only knows. After ten successive games, through the middle of the winter, with no days off even for the six nations, we now face the best part of the season weather-wise with no idea whether we will play any more games!