The new season started in earnest as Thurrock returned to Division 1 rugby in front of a large home crowd saw their local hero’s wearing Pink shirts, the new attire will be Thurrock’s alternate strip this season and when worn the club will make a collection for cancer charities, and this week it raised over £500 from both players and supporters.

The match in front of the majority of the clubs main sponsors started with the visitors very much to the fore, as it seemed that Thurrock were giving too much respect to the visitors whom their side had a multi-national feel, good defence looks key to a good campaign this season and the home side certainly showed some well disciplined defence, although at a cost, Chris Banks on his return had leave the field for treatment with a cut under his eye, but more crucial was the loss of prop Dave Stevens with a broken arm, and was replaced by evergreen Ben Partridge, let's hope that Stevens returns before Christmas.

After the opening salvo Thurrock got to grips with the game and started to make inroads into the Bury half as they played into a fairly stiff breeze. From a scrum just 10 metres into the visitors half a good play from 'man of the match' Brad Retigan fed Darryl Worster whose perfectly timed pass gave Nathan Farrell the room to jink passed his winger and outpace the cover to score near the posts. Aaron Burns added the conversion and Thurrock’s season was up and running. Banks returned to the fray and although Bury huffed and puffed scoring opportunities were very few until a defensive mix-up led to soft unconverted try wide out. The score remained at 7-5 through the break and it was now Thurrock that looked the more likely, Burns was just wide with a penalty which was knocked on behind the line giving Thurrock a 5 metre scrum. From this pressure another move round the base linking the backs gave new captain and last year’s leading league try scorer Darryl Worster the chance crash over, Burns was wide with the conversion. Against the run of play, Bury pulled back a second try, after a string of penalties given away they scored in the corner to make it 12-10
Aaron Burns knocked over penalty to give the home side some breathing space, but with Thurrock in the ascendency the game was wrapped up with 6 minutes remaining as Sam Porter outpaced the defence to score, with Burns adding the final conversion. It was good to the side win their first game of the season, and deserved for hard work put in by the players and the coaching staff in the summer months.