7 IN THE BIN!!!!

REPORT WRITTEN BY ROB WILDMAN

Saturday, Nov 16

Midlands One East

Newark 5 Bedford Ath 25

A memorable individual try from Matt Cox raised hopes of a successful afternoon for Newark in a match dominated by seven yellow cards.

Cox, fit-again after prolonged injury, struck just after half-time, weaving his way from near halfway to put Newark back into the match after they had turned round 10-0 down to Athletic.
He had regained the Newark fly half shirt in the absence of Chris Tate and became the fourth player this season to wear the No 10 jersey.

Newark, chasing a fourth successive win in all competitions, had to reshuffle their backline near kick off when Mark Byrom, due to play full-back, pulled out due to a hamstring problem.

Centre James Challenger moved to full-back giving Ben Dixon an opportunity in midfield while James Stark came in on the wing.

Newark also made a change up front to their pack from recent weeks. A back problem ruled out lock Rory Williams giving Freddie Tatham a chance in his favoured slot and a debut to teenager James Newman on the bindside.

Newman, who has played at Kelham Road from the under-7s upwards, had an effective debut and did not look out of place, joining a back row including two experienced campaigners in Lewis Cove and Jon Webster.

Overall, Athletic proved the stronger and were a bit more adept in managing the decisions of referee Darrell Sinclair to put seven men in the sin bin.
At one stage in the first half, Newark found themselves down to 12 men while Athletic had lost two men to the cooler.

In the second half, Athletic had another three men sin binned giving Newark an opportunity to dominate they failed to take.

The match was reduced to uncontested scrums for a period.

Athletic had led from the early stages through a penalty and added a try and conversion later in the half to lead 10-0 at the interval.

Newark fought their way back into the match when Cox took off to score his try in the corner. He missed the difficult conversion but the score had given the home team hopes of a rewarding afternoon.

However, Athletic – despite them losing men to the bin - gained a penalty which was converted and produced a good break to score a converted try.
To finish they then finished off by gaining a third try near the end, this time from a rolling maul move.

Newark continue league games next Saturday at Belgrave in Leicester, kick off 2.15pm.

Scoring sequence: 0-3 Aths pen, 0-10 try & con half-time, 5-10 Cox try, 5-13 Aths pen, 5-20 Aths try & con, 5-25 Aths try.

Team: Challenger; Stark, Ireland, Dixon, Galinski; Cox, Clark (capt); Dunning, Tomlinson, Price, Tatham, Downing, Newman, Lewis Cove, Webster.

Subs: Barnsdale, Bartsch, Waqalevu.

Try: Cox.

Sin bins: Tomlinson, Cove, Price.

Rob Wildman