The pattern of the game was set right from the start with Thorney kicking off and not managing to send the ball 10m resulting in the first of many scrums. Bourne won this scrum cleanly and with decent ball Harry Thornburn passed to Tom Dixon who found a few yards and then kicked on, with good pressure from Andy Dixon, resulting in Thorney being forced into touch on the 22. Play stayed around the middle of the field with neither team moving the ball far before a knock on by Ant Cooke led to further scrums.

The bad conditions led to 2 incidents of ‘handbags’ with both Ed Cooke and John Hume spending 10 minutes in the bin from separate occasions, the referee certainly didn’t want anything too physical in the game, blowing his whistle at will so the game was very stop start. Bourne showed a much improved performance in the scrum winning their own ball comfortably and even taking 2 against the head, Wood, Powell and Appleby in the front row were solid and the pack worked well as a unit.

The deadlock was broke after 15 minutes with a series of missed tackles in mid field which led to a try being scored out wide, no conversion. Play was then contained to the middle area, Andy Dixon made a break only to be tackled about 30m out, the tackler did not release giving a penalty to Bourne which Tom Dixon decided to kick, with conditions heavy underfoot the kicked dropped just short. Thorney ran the ball out only to be stopped by a high Ed Cooke tackle, fortunately the referee saw sense and only gave a warning.

Thorney kicked the resulting penalty to the 22 and built on this for a period of play eventually earning themselves a scrum 5m out, this led to a No8 pick up and score in the corner, unconverted 10-0 half time.
Substitutions were made to bring fresh legs into the game with the pitch now well and truly cut up, there was a couple of good runs from Matt Rossi and Mark Thomas now on in the centres. The scrum still looked on top with Lee Wilcox now at loose head replacing Neil Wood. Tackles were going in everywhere from both sides and Paul Mambey even managed to tackle himself combined with a ballet pirouette before falling flat on his face.

Patterson was now on the wing with Matt Rossi having took a knock and saw himself have a charge up the wing after good work from Thornburn, Rushton, Douglas and Ewan Jones. Thorney kept kicking the ball ahead at every opportunity and Xanti Xipu was kept very busy at fullback in the 2nd half covering and clearing danger on a number of occasions. Unfortunately one of these kick chases resulted in a further Thorney try in the corner again not converted 15-0 with 15 mins of the game left.

Changes were again made with Jack Berry now on at fullback and Xanti switching to scrum half to try and make a breakthrough, one such attack came to an end though when Ant Cooke again knocked on, but then again everyone on the pitch had today ! Unfortunately no score came with the final score being 15-0. On the day Thorney had got the breaks and took their chances, but Bourne had remained in the match right to the end.

Man of the match Neil Wood

Coaches Quote: The big lads did well in the scrum, showing who was boss and took on board what they’ve done in training.

Quote: If you train hard, you’ll not only be hard, you will be hard to beat.

Let’s see as many as possible at training this week!!