Tabard edged to a 38-32 win over Honourable Artillery Company at Allianz Park in a ten-try thriller on Friday night in London Two North West.

The visitors opened the scoring against the run of play when Tabard were caught offside and conceded a penalty.

But the hosts’ response was immediate and a deserved first try came when Gerald Arasa deceived the defenders to cross the line. Captain Sam Barrow added the conversion to give them a 7-3 lead.

HAC suffered a setback when their stand-off was sent to the sin-bin for slowing the ball down. Tabard took full advantage and a lineout set up John Tilley and he carried the ball over the line to extend their advantage to 12-3 at half time.

Tabard started the second half superbly and quickly added to their lead with two more tries. The first came from a perfectly-weighted cross-field kick by Jack Reilly to full-back Tom King after a minute of the restart and the second came moments later when King caught a high clearance kick, and set off on a 50-metre charge up field. He was stopped and with the HAC defence in disarray the ball was recycled to Arasa who went over unopposed. Reilly’s conversions took the score to 26-3 and appeared to put Tabard in control.

But HAC then got their game going and scored a simple try from a poor Tabard clearance kick. The visitors added a penalty to bring them within 13 points of the opponents.

Tabard responded when Jonny Aguila ducked a challenge and evaded two further attempts to stop him as he raced over in the corner which made it 31-13.

HAC reacted almost immediately with another try before Tabard centre Rhys Lewis crossed the line for the converted score.

Tabard had a player sin-binned which helped the visitors score twice more to set up a tense finish but the hosts held on.