Blaydon Spartans 14, Morpeth Stags 22
Spartans narrowly loose out in a tightly contested fixture with Morpeth. The commitment form the wider club was great to see, Spartans had 6 subs, which hasn’t happened much for any Blaydon team this season, if at all, good to see to:
- Killers guesting in front row
- James T-A and Matt Robertson for dashing from work to be available for 2nd half.
- Michael Thursby made his return to a Blaydon shirt
- Tom Hirst’s game at Sunderland was canned and he came to help out in the front row
Headlines:
- James Murray did great job as captain, to get the team ready for the game, then the game started…….. and although I told him I would write that his performance went down hill as soon as the whistle went, I cant, as always with James he put in a really good performance, scored one, kicked two and captain/played right up to the end of the game. NO lack of effort to try pull the game back.
- Alex Leng introduced himself to the Stags right at the kickoff with a slide in to secure the kick off and steal the ball.
- Game started really well with forwards dominant, some good movement from the backs, but for; some early handling errors, couple wrong options and some good defence form Morpeth Spartans should have been 2 or 3 scores ahead, it always looked like a score would come.
- Savs cut some good lines from fullback and Thomas Reay was probing and making a proper nuisance of himself to Morpeth
- I misled Paul Winter, I told him Tom was going to give him a spell in the 2nd half as we were playing AGP, but never really intended to give him a rest, good thing was he was enjoying it so much, anyway.
- Adam, Jack, Harry, Justin & Killers were putting themselves around the park
- Our set piece worked well and provided a good amount of ball.
- Joel used his head to trip the big number 8, he may want to try other parts of his body in future.
All 6 subs went on at half-time, as I said to the team after the game, it’s important everyone gets game time, given how many turned out, the downside of changing so many players, even for good players, it always disturbs a team and we lost our way at the start of the 2nd half a little, aligned with Morpeth making couple good player substitutions. It took a while for team to gel and we just ran out of time at the end to recover the deficit, with a bit more time, it could easily have been a different scoreline. But great team performance, everyone played for each other, it looked like everyone enjoyed the game and if they play like that the Spartans will win the majority of their remaining games.
After game ‘goings-on’ – anyone from the Spartans squad who hasn’t viewed the Facebook Tom Hirst narrated recap of Joel’s life experiences is encouraged to do so, we re-iterate no doors were damaged in the telling of the tail… good few beers and really funny evening. Always a pleasure, never a chore, Tom! – we miss you.
Scorers:
Trys: James Murray, Killers
Conv: James Murray 2
.
Team:
Paul Winter
Cameron Richardson (Tom Hirst)
Killers
Jack The-Pear Inglis
Adam Turnbull
Alex Leng
Justin Clarke (Divers)
Craig Harrison (Nic Eatch)
Thomas Reay
James Murray
Joel Atkin (David Reay)
Scott Whitfield (James Towart Adams)
Divers (Micheal Thursby)
Simon Cooper (Matt Robertson)
Savs
