Droitwich 15 - Leamington 14

Saturday 24th November 2007

A late penalty by Matt Blackmore saw Droitwich edge home in a nervous affair at the Glyn Mitchell Memorial Ground on Saturday. The win sees Droitwich move into second place in Midlands Division 3 West (South).

The home side started brightly with good lineout ball being used intelligently by the Droitwich three quarters. A good break by Duncan Hughes found Jonny Critchlow on hand, but the support couldn’t reach him in time to keep the move going.

An intelligent line by Ross Coombes linked with Steve Poke to throw a long pass to James Shewell who showed excellent pace to scorch in at the corner.

Leamington hit back strongly and, after a period of good defence by the home side, managed to breach the home side’s defence and go over for a try. The conversion gave Leamington the lead 7—5.

Droitwich upped the work rate with veterans Greg Garfield and Nick Godfrey being especially effective in securing good possession, before the former was harshly sin binned for an offence at the maul.

Early in the second half Jon Andrews and Phil Horton were combining well to make Droitwich’s lineout particularly effective as was hooker Andy Manns, who came into the game as a late replacement.

From a Leamington restart James Davies secured the ball and released winger Craig Mortlemans who accelerated well to score a marvellous try to restore Droitwich’s lead. Hughes kicked an excellent conversion.

Droitwich saw this as an opportunity to put their foot on the pedal and win the game, the whole team raised their efforts and began to dominate territory which resulted in a string of penalties, but the normally accurate Hughes had a woeful day with his goal kicking, missing five attempts. This meant the game was still in the balance when the home side were awarded another penalty. On this occasion Hughes passed the kicking duties over to Blackmore who made no mistake with his effort. This gave Droitwich a lead of two scores, 15—7.

Leamington rallied at the end and crossed for a second converted score to narrow the gap to one point, but as they landed the conversion the final whistle went to leave Droitwich clinging on to claim the points.

After the game centre Jonny Critchlow added “I’d be lying if I said this was our finest performance of the campaign, but we did the basics well and the forwards turned in a strong performance. The score line was closer than we would have liked, but a win against a quality outfit like Leamington is very pleasing.”

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