Luctonians 75 Harrogate 0

Ravaged by positive Covid tests, injuries and unavailabilities, Harrogate travelled to Herefordshire with a much changed team. Several of them had never played together before and it showed. The regulars not playing included: Dennis, Maycock, Mason, Dodds, Coser, Raubicheck, H Yates & Haydock.

Harrogate had a gale force wind behind them in the 1st half but were still unable to put any significant pressure on Luctonians. Crucially they didn’t have their normal set piece domination so were under the cosh from the start. Desperate defence led to Luctonians opening the scoring with a penalty try after 7 minutes and an avalanche of home points followed leading to a 0-26 half time score. Their tries were scored by Nick Yeoward, Sam Jones, Charlie Grimes with 2 conversions from Louis Silver.

More was to follow in the 2nd half which again opened with a home penalty try. Owen Randell came off the bench to replace Silver and he converted tries from Owien Harriot-Davies, Sam Jones, Randell himself, Ben Link, Charlie Grimes and Ben Owen.

In spite of the score, Harrogate competed manfully throughout the match. It wasn’t surprising that the enforced constant defending led to 2 Yellow Cards which were effectively for repeated team offences and they went to experienced players Jake Percival and Sam Brady. There were some silver linings in spite of the result including a good 1st team debut for 18 years old replacement hooker, Jacob Garrett.

In a very quick turnaround, Harrogate are hosting Luctonians next Saturday and are determined to reverse this week’s result.

Luctonians
Watkins, Bengry, Yeoward. Owen, Grimes, T Jones, Silver, Deignan, Link, White, Smith,
Harriott-Davies, Forsythe, Hackley, S Jones. Subs:- Murphy, Powell, Prescott, Robinson-Hall, Randell.

Harrogate
Parry, Edwards, Cummins, Fox, Yates, MacNab, Keith, Sobola, Percival, Baxter, Kitching, Brady, Seymour, Hill, Thompson

Referee
Dan Rowlands (RFU)