Horncastle 22 – Gainsborough 8.
Gainsborough Rugby Club produced a sound performance for the second week running when they made the short trip to play merit table leaders Horncastle in the Lincolnshire merit League. This game saw Craig Woodhead make his debut for the club and he signalled his intent by crashing over on the right wing to score Gainsborough’s only try of the match.
For the first time two man of the match awards were made coach Harry Sampson and Vernon Goude could not separate the level of performance of prop forward Dan Hickson and wing Kyle Dean.
Gainsborough took the game to Horncastle straight from the kick off and pinned them back in their own half for 15 minutes, Horncastle had a superb set of backs with two fast men who were always dangerous with ball in hand, and initially the Gainsborough forwards were very effective at denying them any ball. The Gainsborough pack were so dominant that Horncastle changed their hooker after 12 minutes, On 16 minutes the All Blacks conceded a penalty on the Horncastle 5M line, this took the pressure off the home defence they cleared their lines and set about releasing their backs. Scrum Half Tom Parkinson was injured on 17 minutes and in the 18th Horncastle took advantage of the disruption to the side and crossed the line to score the first points of the game, this gave the home side just the confidence they needed and on 22 minutes worked the ball again through their back and scythed through the Gainsborough backs to touch down under the posts, converted try and Horncastle are 12 points to nil in front.. The Allblacks soon got themselves sorted and played the rest of the half without conceding, they were equal to the home side in ground possession and pressure but could not turn all this into points.
The second half of the game started much the same as the first, Gainsborough pack dominated but there was always fear from the visitors when the home side backs had ball in hand., both Dan and Kyle made try saving tackles to keep Gainsborough in the game but Horncastle broke that defence in the 60 th minute to score touch down under the posts but the conversion was missed, 20 minutes left for Gainsborough to get back into the game they had the forward dominance to do this but could they break the last line of defence and touch down?
Good breaks out of defence by Kyle Dean and Daniel Chadwick along with the powerful running of Elliot Humphrey, but the last pass was always short. The game lost some of its forward momentum when Horncastle had to go to uncontested scrums due to an alleged injury to their prop, this gave all the momentum to the fast home team backs and they touched down again for an unconverted try to go 22 points to 0 in front.
At the halfway point of the second half it looked like Gainsborough would not cross the home sides line, with time marching on captain Andre Russell decided that the All Blacks deserved some points recognition for their efforts and called Tom Parkinson up to kick a penalty for goal rather than position on the park, Tom obliged and Gainsborough had their first 3 points on the board.
It was getting very near to the end of the game Gainsborough had dominated the forward part of the match so much it was hard to believe that they were going to be defeated, but forward dominance did bring them some reward when with only 2 minutes left on the clock another session of forward power and hard work saw the ball released for the backs, as the ball came out new boy Woodhead crashed over the line touching down after a very determined run, unfortunately Tom Parkinson was not able to add to his personal points tally or that of the team, he narrowly missed the conversion.
Although Gainsborough finished defeated it was an excellent game and as well as the joint man of the match award special mention must be made of the contribution of Daniel Chadwick and Elliot Humphrey.
Next Weeks game is at home to Grimsby with a 2.15 KO.
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