The road to titles, the Harvard men's rugby team learned on its way to the 1984 national title last spring, is paved with bumpy, as well as smooth, steps.

Saturday was definitely one of those bumpy steps.

Harvard, now 3-0 in its New England league and 4-0 overall, travelled to Brown for an important league game and barely escaped with its life, 10-7.

Harvard must now beat Norwich and Dartmouth this weekend in Hanover, N.H., to clinch a berth in the New England Championships' final.

If Harvard wins those games, it'll be off to regionals in the spring, with the goal of a second national title in sight.

But before all this could happen, the Crimson had to beat a fairly strong Bruin team which had just been trounced by Dartmouth, 26-0.

Providence had been a house of horrors for the ruggers in recent years, since two of their three biggest losses in the last three years have been at Brown.

The game started out well for the Crimson, when Mark Bamford scored on a penalty shot five minutes into the game to give the visitors a 3-0 lead.

Brown stayed tough and emerged at halftime with a 7-3 lead.

Early second-half action was scoreless, but finally, with 15 minutes left in the match, the Cantabs followed up a second Bamford penalty shot with a Gus Grant try to go on top, 10-7.

And, in the words of Coach Martyn Kingston, Harvard "literally held on for the rest of the game."

Despite the victory, Kingston wasn't exactly thrilled with his team's performance. "Overall," he said, it was "a very unsatisfactory performance, very shaky and uninspired in the forwards and very nervous in the backs."

"Brown commanded the forward play," he added, "not in the sense of overpowering command but in technical command, winning the ball 70 to 80 percent of the time."

Kingston stressed that his team would have to play much better this weekend if it is to have a shot at defending the crown.