THE Lions are slowly improving over the course of the season. In a superb match played in the New River stadium, and watched by a large crowd, the Lions impressed the long established North London Skolars with their attack and solid defence.

The game started with a bang with neither side willing to be the first to let in a try. It took a full 25 minutes of exhausting attack and defence for the Skolars to eventually carve the Lions open for their first try of the match. The Lions let their heads drop slightly and in the time it took for them to regain their composure the Skolars had put two more tries on them.

It looked like the Lions were going to go to half-time without scoring any points when a last push saw them get close to the Skolars line. Some excellent long passing from dummy half Andy Nicholson and stand-off Hywel Gosling gave scrum-half Darren Griffin some room for manoeuvre, and after selling the opposition an outrageous dummy to break through the Skolars defence the Lions had their first try.

After half-time, the Lions, clearly roused by their captain's late try and rousing team talk, came on to do battle. Some massive hits were put in by Mark Chapman and Tim Robins and some great breaks were made by Roy Cutler, the sprinting prop. All this hard work soon equated to another try, with Nick Argent using his considerable strength to smash through the Skolars line from close range and dive over the line.

The Skolars came straight back at the Lions, using their experience to take the defence apart, with another brace of quick-fire tries. The Lions weren't downhearted by this. Great defence put pressure on the Skolars, forcing them to knock on and give a scrum to the Lions. The ball was fed in by Griffin and, spotting a gap, he took the ball and sprinted 80 metres to score the Lions third try.

The Skolars scored one more try, but towards the end of the match the Lions were getting stronger. This is usually the Lions' weakest part of the match but they were determined to reverse this trend.

Winger Chris Curtis went over for a great try after hard work by the forwards got the Lions in a great position. Gosling put a towering cross field kick up in the air, Curtis sprinted across the pitch and leapt in the air above everyone else to claim what was certainly the most spectacular try of the match.

The Lions finished off with a hat-trick of tries for captain Griffin after scoring a simple try from dummy-half after poor defending from the Skolars.