Both sides traded penalties, but it wasn’t until around the half hour mark that the first try was scored when Luke Spring piled over from close range for his first five points of the season for Richmond. Callum Grieve converted.

Nottingham were straight onto the front foot following that setback, however, only allowing their hosts to next touch the ball three minutes later, when they had to kick off following Jack Dickinson squeezing in at the corner, spinning off the back of the maul. Gwyn Parks converted excellently from an acute angle, making it all square, 10-10, at half time.

The Archers took the lead for the first time within a minute of the start of the second half as full back Harry Simpson chased his own grubber in behind, putting pressure on his opposite number who spilled the ball. Harry Graham was able to scoop it up and dive over the line. In echoes of his missed kick that ultimately separated the sides at Caldy the previous week, Parks’s conversion attempt drifted wide of the right hand post.

The vast majority of the rest of the half became an aerial battle until, with five minutes remaining, Richmond kept battering the Nottingham try line, with Seb Brownhill eventually making it over. Grieve added the extras to put his side back in front.

With the clock about to tick over to 80 minutes, Nottingham were given a scrum deep in their own territory, with practically the length of the field to cover to try and salvage something from the game. Having made it up to their opponent’s 22, with the aid of a penalty for a high tackle by Grieve that saw him sent to the bin, the hosts infringed again from the lineout.

The outcome of the match was therefore in Parks’s hands, or rather, at his feet. Unfortunately for the travelling contingent, his penalty was wide of the mark, meaning Richmond took all four points with a 17-15 victory.

Centre Kegan Christian-Goss reflected on the evening: “We stuck to our game plan and played some good rugby in patches. Not the result we wanted at all but we got one point out of it which is a bit of a positive. We lost a couple of those moments in the second half and let them in and they scored points, so fair play to Richmond. But we’ve got to make sure we’re better in those moments and win those battles.”