Titans' delight at first win

The Clifton Lane men put in a solid second half shift in the British and Irish Cup to overturn a 23-10 half-time deficit and score 18 unanswered points to bag their first victory of the campaign.

Rotherham now face Richmond in London in the cup this weekend before resuming their Championship campaign at home to Ealing in a fortnight's time — and Key is hopeful that Saturday's win may be a turning point.

He said: "I’m delighted to get our first win of the season, but I’m more delighted for the boys. 

"We facilitate the process of actually putting them into positions and we help to make them better players, but at the end of the day they have to prove that to themselves and the main area to do that is on a match day.

"I thought our composure and the way we reacted to a poor first half performance and to come back in the way we did was very good, especially in how we controlled the final ten minutes."

Connacht, the B-string of the top Irish side, bossed the first half with two tries from Fijiian international Naulia Dawai and then skipper Dave Heffernan.

But Titans, who had managed to get on the scoreboard through Chalie Maddison's drive over, put in a good second half as Ben Foley and then Tom Burns scored to put them to within a point at 23-22 and then two Caolan Ryan penalties sealed the win.

There's a full report in this Friday's Advertiser.