Thornton Heath based South London Storm Rugby League Club lost their opening game in the Rugby League Conference 2001, when they went down 38-10 at Bedford Swifts.

The match was more keenly fought than the scoreline suggests, and the margin of defeat did not do justice to the effort the South Londoners put in. Indeed, until the hour mark Storm were in contention, but four tries late on sealed Swifts win.

Storm enjoyed the better of the opening exchanges, with half back pairing Terry Reader and Keri Ryan at the heart of most Storm's moves.

However, it was Bedford who opened the scoring after twenty minutes with a converted breakaway try. Storm responded almost immediately when Ryan shot through for and unconverted try.

For the remainder of the half you couldn't separate the two sides, but just when it looked like Storm would go in trailing by only two points, slack defence allowed Swifts to cross under the sticks to establish a 12-4 interval lead.

Swifts came out firing and added a third try within a minute of the

restart, but again Storm fought back with a try from impressive prop Nick