Grove and Milton Keynes fought out a tense 25 : 25 draw at Milton Keynes on Saturday to open their Southern Counties (North) league season. It was the physically much larger home team that started the stronger when after only 4 minutes a 'fluffed' kick by them was collected by their centre who ran through the Grove defence to score a converted try between the posts. MK kept the pressure on but it was Grove fly half Nick Sevier who levelled the score against the run of play, when he ran through the gap he'd created with a beautifully dummied pass and scored between the posts which he then converted himself. MK kept up the pressure and soon scored again to take the score to 14 : 7. Worse, in trying to prevent the score an illegal trip came from Grove and both flanker Ben Nicholl and winger Jack Alder were yellow carded. With now only thirteen men on the field it looked like Grove would go under but despite relentless pressure they held out for the next ten minutes and didn't allow MK to score. The best try saving effort coming from wing Paul Shepherd. Grove broke out and MK began to give away a series of penalties two of which Nick Sevier slotted to narrow the score to 14 : 13 then just before half time scrum half Steve Lawrence smashed his way over the line to put Grove into the lead at 14 : 18.
In the second half MK regained the lead with two penalties and an unconverted try and it was not until the last second of the match that Grove equalised with a great try from Ben Nicholl which he ran in between the posts to make Nick Sevier's conversion a formality. Grove had got out of jail!