St Ives vs. Market Harborough
St Ives went into their final league game this season, looking to finish on a high. A disappointing performance against Harborough earlier in the season added extra incentive to put out a good result and finish with a bang.
From the kick off it looked as though this would be St Ives’ day, strong forward play and front row dominance by the trio of Jim Lewsam, Gez Gilburt and Josh Dear began to show the Market Harborough pack that this would not be an easy game for them. From the first scrum St Ives shoved the visitors off their own ball and launched an attack down the wing. The attack fizzled out but from the next scrum St Ives again turned over the possession in the opposition 22. Taking the initiative Mike Sykes burst through his would be tackler and scored to the right of the posts. Adam Clark was successful with the conversion.
This looked to catapult St Ives into frenzy, but some interesting decisions from the referee put a stop to further attacks. It would appear that men were being taken out off the ball, but despite complaints from the Bulls Captain the referee saw nothing wrong. This knocked St Ives for six and seemed to bring a halt to their attacking prowess as the visitors began to put in early tackles whenever possible.
From one of these incidents Market Harborough opened their account, with the receiver taken out of the game, the ball fell loose allowing the opposition to scream in from their own half and score under the posts. Adding to this a penalty and a further converted try, St Ives went in at half time 17-7 down.
The second half became a torrid affair too. St Ives looked to enjoy the majority of possession once again, but could not convert it into points, coming close on a number of occasions. Eventually it was Market Harborough who had the final say, an interception on half way allowed the winger to score on the left hand side.
Final Score: St Ives 7 - Market Harborough 22
Speaking after the game Ross Thompson was disappointed. Although this match had no bearing on our final position in the league, it would have been nice to finish on a high. It would be easy to place blame on the referee’s decisions on the day, but there is no excuse. We needed to adapt our game plan to meet the changes and we didn’t do so. Despite this I feel it has been a successful season. Last year we recorded no wins so anything would be an improvement! But we came into this year looking to prove ourselves and I believe we have done so.