York dish out a salutory lesson

A harsh lesson was dished out to a youthful side by an experienced York team

The two sides lined up as polar opposites the gate pack full of young players against a York side that featured many vets and a big set of lads.

An inspirational team talk by Dave Hamblin set the scene, let’s use our advantage and get the ball out wide, use our pace and run them ragged but first of all we have to earn the right to play wide by fronting up by securing enough ball.

Despite going behind to an early penalty gate were competing and when debutant Ben Pye used his speed to intercept a floated pass to the York winger and streaked away to score a 70m try, Tim Tombling added the extras and a 3 v 7 lead.

Getting into an arm wrestle with a much bigger pack was always going to make it tough and during the first half despite living off scraps gate looked dangerous whenever the ball went wide and when Harry Barnard showed the defence a clean pair of heels following good work by Greg Aspin the lead was up to 3 v 14.

The danger signs were evident when following a 20m rolling maul the York pack kept the momentum up and splintered the gate pack before crashing over to reduce the arrears 8 v 14 at half time.

The second half started positively enough with another good back move with George Ellis and Tim Tombling creating fast ball Greg Aspin and Harry Barnard linking well to see Greg break the tackles to go under the posts from 20m out and a lead of 8 v 21.

That was as good as it was going to get as the York pack took control, the gate tackling from the forwards with the exception of skipper Dave & Elliot Lewis was all too often too high and at times looked a bit half hearted allowing York to gain momentum time and again and meter by meter they rumbled the gate pack backwards for 3 forward crafted tries and a lead of 27 v 21.

There was still a couple of opportunities to snatch a win and a couple of match winning tackles by the underused York back 3 denied Harry Barnard and then Tom Brennan to secure a well deserved victory.

There were a lot of youthful players in the gate side which is great but they need to be prepared learn from those more experienced as they develop in adult rugby – learning to listen will be key, they need to understand that as people we have 2 ears and one mouth and they should be used in that ratio!!

Things in rugby often don’t go to plan and that’s when individuals character as well as ability get highlighted.

A number of them will need to develop a much more combative and physical attitude, too often beaten to loose balls by players much older who simply had more desire to win a 50/50 ball or bust a gut to get to the breakdown.

Good lessons learned and some solid individual performances but with more ball a game that could have and should have been won.