North One East
Pocklington 35 – 21 Percy Park
23 league games gone and 3 to go before the end of season 2014/15. Park will be looking to regroup for next term as the string of defeats continued away to Pocklington. Once again for goodness knows how many times this season Park conceded a try inside 2 minutes as Pock wing Archie Fothergill went in at the corner and full back Jack Fletcher slotted the difficult conversion.
Minutes later Fletcher put his side 10 – 0 ahead with a dubious penalty that the referee awarded despite both touch judges saying the kick went wide of the posts.
Having gone behind, Percy Park then started playing some rugby and Josh Hedley burst through a ruck near the Pocklington line to open the visitor’s account and fly half Paul Spowart converted. Just before the break Spowart levelled the scores with a penalty as Park took some advantage of the home side being without hooker Ben Stephenson who had been sin binned for a professional foul.
Park started the second half well with another Spowart penalty and a try in the right hand corner for Toby Davison, leading 10 – 18 after 45 minutes. The visitors then went into their shell, or depending on your viewpoint Pock started playing some decent rugby as they scored 4 second half tries to a Spowart penalty to win 35 – 21.
Percy Park were still in the hunt right until the 79th minute with the score at 25 – 21, but a couple of lapses in concentration allowed scrum half James Thompson to take a quick free kick and dart over the line, and then 3 minutes later on the stroke of full time openside Karl Durkin retrieved a speculative chip which Park failed to tidy up.
Next week Park travel to West Hartlepool.
Candy League Plate Final 1st Leg
Percy Park Lions 70 – 15 Alnwick II
Alnwick will have to win the second leg (date still to be determined) by 56 clear points to win the Candy Plate due to a really strong performance by the Lions. The visitor’s actually turned up a player short, so Chairman of Rugby Thomas Turnbull who was on the bench for the Lions sportingly agreed to play for the opposition to ensure they had a full compliment.
Next week the 2 sides meet again, but this time in the Northumberland Cup which is at North Shields KO 4pm.