Deepings 43 St Ives 12
St Ives continued their 2007/2008 season with a disappointing loss to league newcomers Deepings.
St Ives travelled to Deepings with a much different team to the one that beat Stamford. Due to other commitments and injuries (and one suspension…), Saints took an almost completely different set of backs with them. However, hopes were high in anticipation for what was sure to be a hard fought match.
St Ives lost the toss and elected to receive the kick off. Deepings opened the game with a sly grubber kick to start the game, catching Saints napping. At the ensuing confusion, the St Ives defence was caught offside at the ruck and gave away a soft penalty. Deepings then mounted a sustained attack on the St Ives line and eventually the pressure paid off when they spread the ball out to their wing.
This score seemed to galvanise St Ives, as they seemed to perk up and start playing proper rugby. A series of good set piece play at the scrum and lineout and solid rucking enabled fly half Jack Blackley to mount some good attacks. Spotting a gap, he decided to back his pace and managed to set off on a run of his own, touching down in the corner to even the scores.
However, this was to be the end of St Ives scoring for the half. For reasons known only unto themselves, Saints went to sleep and let their defence around the fringes of the ruck slip to gift the Deepings hooker two soft tries. Despite dominance at the set piece, Saints just couldn’t mount a meaningful attack. Then they suffered the blow of losing Blackley to injury, falling awkwardly in a tackle and badly twisting his ankle. Confusion then took hold of the relatively inexperienced back line and Deepings were able to capitalise, scoring twice more to bring the score to 29 – 5 at half time.
Just before the end of the half, one of the Deepings forwards spear tackled Saints number 8 Matt Ball, earning himself a yellow card and 10 minutes in the sin bin (an offence that we were led to believe now carries an automatic sending off..?). St Ives hoped to take advantage of their temporary one man advantage after the break.
Saints started brightly, mounting several hard fought attacks. Some good passages of play and powerful rucking from the St Ives forwards took them into the Deepings 22. In one ruck, Saints open side flanker Ollie Scott appeared from nowhere with the ball in hand and sprinted unopposed in under the Deepings posts.
Saints continued their set piece dominance but a further try evaded them. St Ives also then suffered the loss of winger Mark Houlden to an off the ball incident where he and the Deepings winger both went for the ball and Houlden collected an elbow to the head and ended up in A&E with a concussion (after the match was said to be ok but a little dazed).
Deepings then managed to spread the ball wide to their wingers again to score twice more to finish the match 43 – 12
Speaking after the match St Ives captain Pete Hammond said “I didn’t feel that the final score line reflected the way we played. We played very well on the whole, excelling in the line out and dominating the scrum both on our put in and on theirs. Our rucking was excellent, forcing several turn overs, and our mauling was good, stripping the ball from their runners on a number of occasions and retaining possession when we took the ball in. However, at times our tackling left much to be desired, allowing Deepings to come through our defensive lines. Sloppy defending at the fringes of a couple of rucks also let them in to score. They also had a couple of very quick backs who they used to great effect. At the end of the day, you can dominate the game, but silly mistakes will cost you dearly. We have many positives to take from today’s performance and some vital things to work on in training. Hopefully we can iron these issues out in time for our next game, home to Biggleswade on October the 6th”.