Blaydon Development 22 – Northern Wanderers 12
Playing on the top pitch in good sunny conditions the development team aided by the bricks managed to scrape together 14 players. We had never beaten northern in the league being pipped at the post twice in previous seasons by just one point.
A good start from Blaydon pinned northern into their 22 and a couple of promising attacks were halted 5 metres out. The visitors eventually pushed Blaydon back up field but, attacking right back at Northern, Blaydon forced a penalty 25 metres out, Joe ‘why i man’ strolled up to the ball kicking it over for 3 points.3-0.
Watching from the side line you could tell Northern were the team that trained together and on 20 min from good team play they scored – unconverted 3-5.
Another 10 minutes of even play until on 30mins we had our openside flanker binned for being offside for the 6th time (didn’t think so) down to 13 men we ground out the last 10 minutes. Knowing the 2s had 16 players we dispatched a runner over to the river side pitch and asked for Chris Douglas from the bench. All this took time so i missed the half time team talk but we returned to find Blaydon had already scored from the kick off converted 10-5 (must have been a good talk).
Chris beefed up the pack and the game was evenly matched for the next 25 minutes the Blaydon defence were superb always up on their opposite man tackling and forcing the errors but we began to flag and northern pushed home the numerical advantage. On 34 minutes from a ruck 8 metres out the visitors span the ball wide to their backs, from deep came barrel man, A northern front row player who had been hanging back ran a great line, the ball was switched back inside for him to take at pace, cutting through 4 tackles he reached the line and gave the ball to his support to score – converted 10-12.
With only 6 minutes remaining and loosing, I was more than happy, we had played giving 100% we were out on our feet but we never gave up, I couldn’t ask for any more but in one last act of defiance we found a reserve of energy. From the kick off after good forward support play we found ourselves 5 metres out, no white line fever, we took our time and rolled the ball up to 3 metres Scott taking the ball in hand at the back of the ruck bulldozed over for the score in the right hand corner unconverted 15-12.
For the second week in a row we had nicked the game at the end but this week we had one last play. Blaydon collected the ball from the kick off and attacked with 2 minutes remaining at the breakdown northern turned over the ball but fumbled the pass. Joe Snowdon and Scott Whitfield were on the loose ball Scott kicking the ball forward both chased but it was Scott that broke clear kicking the ball another 5 meters to touch down Joe ‘why i man’ converted making the final score 22-12.