St Ives 7 Rushden & Higham 10
St Ives continued their 2007/2008 campaign with an agonising loss to league newcomers Rushden & Higham.
Rushden, recently demoted from the league above, came to St Ives looking for their first league win and St Ives were looking to turn their season round after some hefty losses. Unfortunately for St Ives, Rushden came out on top.
St Ives won the toss and elected to play down the slope and receive the kick off, hoping to capitalise on the downhill advantage and slight tail wind. From the off, it looked to be a very physical encounter, with both teams hitting hard and rucking with enthusiasm and physicality. However, St Ives forwards had the advantage over the visitors in almost every part of the game, and kept Rushden pinned in their own half for most of the first period. Saints scrum was, even by their own high standard, shockingly dominant throughout the game, with the welcome return of Gez Gilburt at hooker joining props Pete Hammond and Josh Dear to form a very destructive front row. Indeed, when given the option (when St Ives infringed) of a scrum or line out, Rushden chose line out every time as there scrum was so powerless against St Ives. And it didn’t matter who had the put in at the scrum, Saints would drive Rushden off their own ball and win it back.
However, despite all this, Saints could only manage one score. After a series of phases, the ball came out and found its way to Ross Thompson who powered over the line for the try. Jack Blackley was successful with the conversion.
This score seemed to turn the game, and not for the better. Scuffles broke out in play, and both sides started to play scrappy rugby. At one point a fight broke out after the Rushden scrum half was lucky to stay on the pitch after almost taking Blackley’s head off in a high tackle. And many infringements by Rushden at rucks and scrums went unnoticed by the referee.
Nevertheless, Saints went into half time 7-0 leaders.
The second half continued in much the same vein. Blackley’s restart didn’t travel the required 10metres so Rushden opted for a scrum to restart. Underhand tactics by their front row brought it down, and the ref reset the scrum, setting the wheels in motion for another lesson in how to scrummage by St Ives.
With most of the possession and territory, Saints were looking dominant again. Good support running from the Saints back row of Bryan Richardson, Ollie Scott and Matt Ball ensured good recycling of the ball, and good rucking enabled Saints to retain the ball. However, their backs weren’t working well together and they couldn’t turn possession into points. But they were able to defend well, with tackling much better than the previous week and they managed to stifle Rushden’s attacks. Unfortunately, an offside penalty near their own line gifted Rushden an opportunity to have a crack at some points, and they did so. 7-3 to St Ives.
Leading with 5 minutes to go, Saints were repelling a Rushden attack when one of their backs broke through the line and was heading to score. Pete Hammond appeared as if from nowhere to bring him down 10 metres short of the line, saving a certain try. As he was getting up from the tackle, the referee took it upon himself to penalise Hammond for not rolling away from the tackled player. Rushden took the penalty quickly, despite the referee not giving a mark and, to compound the issue, touched the ball on the knee not the foot, which should have resulted in the ref calling the penalty back and having it retaken. However he didn’t and Rushden ran the ball in to score. The conversion was successful. 7-10 to Rushden.
There wasn’t enough time left for Saints to mount another attack, and so they were condemned to there 3rd consecutive defeat.
Speaking after the match, St Ives captain Pete Hammond said “I feel kind of sick. We dominated so much of the game, yet we came up second best. The penalty against me (that led to their try) leaves me baffled. I was penalised for not rolling away whilst I was actually rolling away. It was a good tackle, and I managed to turn the player to present the ball to my own forwards ensuring that we won the ball. However, the refs decision is final, be it right or wrong. But that didn’t really cost us the match; we lost it by our selves. We dominated the game in every area, scrums, open play, rucks, everything. But we couldn’t turn this into points, only scoring the one try in the first half. Again, this comes down to two things – yet again fielding a back line that hadn’t played together (due to unavailability of players) and people not turning up to training. We must get some consistency; otherwise I cannot see us staying in this division for next season. Hopefully we will get more players at training – which is on a Thursday night, 7pm to 9pm – and put a team together that can gel.”
Saints next game is on November the 10th, when they host Oundle (Huntingdon have cancelled next week’s game).