Victory Snatched Away From Novos

On a cold and windy day at Sutherland Park, a large crowd were witness to an entertaining match throughout. Novos started the match into a strong breeze and looked fantastic early on as they put into practice the things they had been working on in training. After some well structured play from both units, they ball ended up in the hands of Shaun Stewart. He set of on a 30m run fending off several tackles before offloading to the returning Jez Nash for Novos first score. 5-0 Novos

Novos received the ball from the kick off and again looked very organised in attack. More structured play up front finally releasing the backs in space. Then Sam Busby came off his wing to make a break in midfield which led to a converted try by Matthew Kilgore. Novos 12-0 into the wind.

We then fell back into our 22m for a period and allowed Medicals some restarts in and around our red zone. Medicals were good enough to score two simple scores allowing them to take the lead 14-12.

This however spurred Novos back into action and we once again got over the gain line at ease up front before bringing the ball back to Busby. Again, he left the defence flat footed and scooted down the touchline before stepping the fullback to go in untouched, converted by Kilgore. Almost straight from the kick off the side got back into their shape, powering forward via some great carries up front. Once again the ball was moved to Busby, same result as he raced in for another try converted by Kilgore. Novos 26-14 up.

This should probably have been the half time score but late in the half Novos coughed up the ball in their 22m. From the resulting scrum Medicals scored after some clever obstruction from their flanker. Half time Novos 26-21 up with the wind at their backs in the second half.

The second half saw a complete change of fortune for Novos as we lost our shape a little and stopped doing the things we had done so well in the first half. Despite this we were able to score as Jonny Ward raced 60m for a try pushing us out to a 31-21 lead. By now we were not playing well as we conceded penalties, took some wrong decisions and were generally camped in our 22m.

In a typical derby match, Medicals refused to go away and set up a grandstand finish with a try with five mins to go to make it Novos 31, Medicals 28. We kicked deep and eventually caused a knock on, we instantly put in a poor kick and to our horror, advantage over was the call. Medicals fullback made a telling break but we somehow recovered our defensive shape. To their credit medicals kept the ball for what seemed like 20+ phases. With time up, Medicals winger crashed over in the corner to give them a 33-31 win !

Thank you to John Ash for taking control of the match. Apologies for not catching up with you in the bar afterwards as I would normally do put I was putting away several cans to try and get over my frustration of losing a game from that situation !

To our lads, hard luck but we still had a great night at the club and then onto the town (apart from Ben Melrose perhaps) Hopefully we saw that when we played with the structure set up in training, we were fantastic. There were some great individual performances from Josh Stacey, Ben Merrett, Alex Littlefair, Sam Busby and Jez Nash. In addition, Rich Dixon showed enough promise at 9 that we may have perhaps found an answer to earlier issues. It was also pleasing to see Richard Dodd play for the two's and Robbie Stephens make his debut at scrum half. So despite the loss things are on the up as we get players back, the three's continue to win and we all had a club night out on the town.

This week the first team travel to Morpeth who will be hurting from their draw with Gosforth. Great opportunity for us to have a say in who wins the league. Also, we will look to improve on our last outing against them when we were 10-7 up with 20 mins to play before the ran away with things.

Let's keep going forwards lads. Big February ahead of us ! Rob and I will see you at training on Tuesday.