Novos 2's 12 - 39 Alnwick

The Super 2's were fighting a battle on two fronts as they faced Alnwick 2nds and the weather on Saturday at Sutherland Park.
Whilst we bravely battled the appalling conditions, we seemed to lack the same grit against our actual opponents, conceding the game 39-12.

Changes were made from last week fine performance against Consett, seeing some old faces returning from injury such as Sam Bushby, who replaced the missing Skipper Ben Melrose, Jonny Ward, Joe Ball and Mike Cousins. As well as seeing some new faces enter the fray, with Curtis Walker & Billy Porter making their first starts.

The meet time greeted us were dark clouds, snow showers and bitterly cold temperatures. This was the most welcoming news to the boys, who dusted of their emergency layers and thermals, apart from Jonny Ward who appeared to have packed for a summer holiday and was forced to wear several bibs for the warm up. Shaun O’ Connell took a different approach by performing mental gymnastics to convince himself the meet time was half 1, thus minimising his time in the cold.

The warm up again was slick, focused and clinical, with only a handful of balls going down, which in the conditions was impressive. The forwards spoke of securing quick, and more importantly clean ball, to maximise the chance of unleashing our backs in the unfavourable weather. In terms of defence we had been working hard on spacing and were confident that Alnwick wouldn’t find space in the midfield.
However, all of this good work in training and in the warm up appeared to go out of the window at kick off, and the weather seemed to get the better of us.

In attack we couldn’t seem to secure more than two phases before conceding a turnover, the ball we did win was scrappy, and our handling, which was immaculate in the warm up, disintegrated under pressure.
This meant there was a large amount of scrummaging, which benefitted Alnwick who pushed us off every scrum. This wasn’t a true reflection on the forwards ability as we were scrummaging without an out and out tight head, with Alex Milton bravely pulling on the 3 shirt.

In order to stay in the game, we knew our defence would have to be on point, which unfortunately it wasn’t. The weather again was a factor, as some slipped off tackles whilst others appeared to show a lack in desire to get wet, either way the statistics made for poor reading, with 15 missed tackles in the first half an hour and 30 overall, complementing the 15 plus turnover conceded. No disservice to Alnwick who appeared unaffected by the weather, and executed their game plan of hard running in the midfield and fine offloading in the tackle, and succeed in picking off our defence and capitalising on our errors.

Our luck was further compounded by injuries, most serious was which was Alex Milton who went off with a broken scaphoid bone after 20 minutes, condemning me to another trip to A&E. We wish him a speedy recovery, and hope his missus doesn’t kill him. Also we saw Billy Porter come off in the first half an hour (bruised ribs), as well Will Doyle (strained ankle), Ben Kelly (shoulder strain), Mike Cousins (Achilles), Sam Busby (ankle) and Callum Hoy (Foot/Ankle) over the course of the game. This left us with 13 men on the field at the 75-minute mark and caused the referee to blow up early.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom however, forgiving the old cliché, we did win the second half, keeping Alnwick out and scoring twice ourselves through Joe Ball and Jonny Ward. I would have talked at length about these however I wasn’t there to witness them, as I was busy playing nurse at the RVI. However, by all accounts it was a much improved performance in the second half, it was a pity that the damage was already done with 39 unanswered points.

Other positives to come out of the game, was the successful return of some our walking wounded, with Joe Ball playing a full 80 since his concussion and fully deserved his man of the match award. As well as the likes of Jonny Ward, & Sam Busby putting in long shifts which will please the higher management. Despite the scrum capitulating under plausible circumstances, the line out fired extremely well, winning all our ball as well as a few turnovers, and credit must go to Tom Dias and the rest of the forwards for that. Finally, Greg Humphreyson, who put in a commendable performance, and never stopped marshalling the troops, as well as winning the Andy Goode look alike competition against the Alnwick number 20.

Obviously the boys were disappointed with the result and performance, however we hope lessons have been learnt, heads haven’t dropped, and our incredible team spirit doesn’t falter. Roll on next Saturday and the team bonding session in Durham in preparation for the cup game against Ponteland. More details to follow.

Jack Spoor