Cape Fear traveled to Charlotte; Saturday for what turned out to be a festival of rugby with 3 high school games to be played in the morning, followed by Cape Fear’s matrix match, and then the final game of the day was Charlotte Old Originals to play last year’s Division 2 national champions Raleigh Vipers. Whilst all this was happening outside there was live coverage in the club house of the 6 nation’s tournament currently taking place in Europe.

     Fear took to the pitch favorites but they knew it would be a tough game as Charlotte were yet to win a game this season, and with the big home crowd including Charlottes 1^st team the B-side had a lot to prove. Charlotte started well and were first to draw blood, as the big forward pack took a quick penalty on Fear’s line to go crashing over with only 10mins of play gone. Fear replied with a penalty kick only to return the favor 3 minutes later. For much of the first half Charlotte controlled the game, with Fear feeding off the scraps, but when fear had a chance they took it with 2 consecutive tries. The first try coming from a well worked backs move to put Keith Markfield in for his 2^nd try in as many games, Fear added the extra 2. The second try could maybe put forward as the try of the year; it all started deep in Fear’s half with fly half Williams with the ball going on to Jason Gruner, Merritt Mclean, and Ryan Glass before returning to Gruner to score under the posts. Half time score Cape Fear 15 Charlotte B 8.

      The second half saw the Fear pack step up and take control of the game although there was only one try for the fear side, Charlotte never looked like scoring even when they strengthened their team with A-side players. Although this is a good result for the Fear side at the half way point of the season the coaching staff are still not satisfied with the performance as a whole the game is 80 minutes long and against the better teams in the league Fear can not afford to only play well for 40 minutes.

     Fear has next Saturday off before heading to Charleston on the 23^rd of February. Charleston will be looking to compensate for the loss earlier in the season at Cape Fear.