The first half saw a great deal of midfield play, loose rushes and individual attempts to get through predominating over smooth efforts. The "French enjoyed ritorial advantage and as the game wore on it was very noticeable that Stourbe secured the ball much more often than Wallis in set scrums and on the few occasions that the latter did get it back, the Forces invariably shoved the Services off the ball before it could come out cleanly.
Wallis was dangerous on two occasions in the first ten minutes when he broke away on long runs but Brouste pulled him down each time before any damage had been done. The attempts of the British side to open ouf the play was frustrated time after: time by the vicious tackling of the Frenchmen. who were always up on their opponents like lightning.
On the other hand, the French threes indulged in several good movements, but poor passing and fumbling offset any advantage that might have been secured. Stevens, however, was responsible on no less than four occasions for saving almost certain tries, his cleverly timed smother-tackles, putting paid to the fast moving French wingers' efforts to get through.
From a penalty awarded ten yards inside. the French half, Stevens attempted to drop a goal, but his kick was short and the ball was returned by Got with plenty of interest. At this period of the match Got was doing remarkably well, his kicking and fielding being accurate.
Shortly before the interval the Forces just missed taking the lead by narrowly failing to convert a penalty for feet-up.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.