Gate Battened Down By Novos Pack

Squad News - unavailability of Tommy Goodman, Chris Ward in the twos to get some confidence back, Cillian O'Shaughnessy long term injury, Rich Harrison unavailable, Carl Parkinson using his get out of the match free card for his Xmas party. In come Bruno Smith and George Hazell, both promoted from the twos last week.

Conditions were challenging to say the least with gale force winds battering Sutherland Park and the posts looked like they were going to snap at times. We lost the toss but got the end we wanted anyway, result ! The game scrummed off at 1415 as we can't call Richard Dodds attempt to start the match a kick off ! Not his fault as when he dropped the ball to kick off he had to chase it down the field to drop kick it !

We edged the early exchanges as our pack were dominating the set piece battle and Dodd had found his kicking boots and controlled field position. Camped in Gatesheads 22 we spent 2-3 mins hammering at the line. We were kept out by some tenacious defence but at some consequence. Tired from all their defending we were able to take a Gateshead scrum feed and pushed their exhausted pack over the line for Alex Littlefair to score. Novos 5-0 with a howling wind behind them.

Gateshead put themselves under a lot of pressure at times as they tried to move the ball to their outside centre. More often than not the pass went astray and we set up more attacks. From a midfield scrum we executed a back row move which saw Littlefair feed debutant Bruno Smith. He took the ball up to the line, turning back the clock a few months as he put his RGS pal, Lewis Chater in to make it 10-0.

We then had some injury worries as try scoring machine Aedan Moloney caught a stray knee to the face. Then Johnny Ward was hit quite badly with a swinging arm. Luckily Ward was able to stay on after some magic water.

We turned around into the gale with a slender lead. However, we spoke about taking contact after two passes to try avoid errors and deny Gateshead possession.

Words turned into actions as Novos stormed across the gain line with relative ease. Surprisingly however, it was Gateshead that scored the first try of the second half. From a 22 m drop out Gateshead secured possession in our half and created a ruck. A clever clear out of one of our fringe defenders created a 2 on 1. Well finished and conversion added from the corner for 10-7 Novos.

Novos continued bullying our opponents upfront and we showed some good game management at times. From another solid scrum the ball was shifted to Johnny Ward who brushed aside 2 or 3 tacklers to score in the corner. That proved to be the final try for a well deserved win 15-7.

Thank you to our exchange ref who got a lot of decisions right and took charge of a game played in impossible conditions.

I think that was one of our finest performances in my time at the club as we battled away in gale force winds and overcome the unavailability of some regulars. However, Gateshead were missing some key players also which perhaps contributed to us winning the set piece battle and I thought our tactics were spot on.

There were huge performances from every one up front put special mention must go to Mike Stowe who nailed every line out throw when their guy was clearly struggling in such a horrible wind. All of our other forwards had an impact but I also thought we out played them in the loose. Whilst Martin Pluskall was brilliant for them he was often outnumbered by Sam Warren, Ben Merrett and Alex Littlefair. I would struggle to count the number of rucks Sam cleaned out, how many carries Ben had or how many tackles Alex made. All the forwards were superb but that trio allowed us to dominate possession.

Mustn't forget the backs who kept errors to a minimum and Dodd and Smith organised and applied our tactics perfectly.

A crucial couple of weeks ahead as we try to show our staying power up till Xmas. This week we have Acklam who have a strong home record. I have never taken a team to Acklam before and I hope to leave with the win we need to keep the pressure on the teams above us.

On Thursday we are training at Druid Park in an attempt to ensure pitches 2 and 3 are playable in the weekend. It is 2000-2100 ! See you all there.