Beverley Smash Penrith

What a match!  Ten tries and nearly all of them as good as any you are likely to see all season.  The game itself was no classic but the flair and attacking enterprise shown by both sides provided some great rugby.

Bevelrey RUFC came back in fine style after an awful start to overcome a Penrith side which looked to have the game already wrapped up before it had hardly got going.  For some reason games against Penrith have a habit of bringing out the best and the worst of Bevelrey RUFC.  Today there was both in abundance. For ten minutes Bevelrey RUFC were simply dreadful.  They stood about bemused and half asleep as Penrith easily took the lead with a try by scrum half Paul Newton after eight minutes and then added another direct from the re-start when centre James Ella romped straight back through the entire home defence to touch down.

Without the injured the Bevelrey RUFC forward play was laboured and lacking in any sort of oomph.  The lineout was a disaster and remained so for the entire match.  Most of the time it was hard to believe that the ball was not being deliberately thrown to the Penrith jumpers who were clearly having a field day.   Nevertheless a penalty by Phil Duboulay somehow got Bevelrey RUFC back into the game and on twenty minutes against all the odds they suddenly found themselves level when Sam Atiola burst through the centre for a try which Duboulay converted.

Penrith re-took the lead with a superb try down the right touchline by winger Jon Fell but by then Bevelrey RUFC were beginning to get their act together and starting to look a bit more up for it.  Their midfield of Duboulay, Junior Tupai and Sam Atiola is probably as good as any in this league and they began to wreak havoc with some devastating breaks and slick movement.  Tupai with a mazy run from halfway put Bevelrey RUFC17-15 ahead with a beautiful converted try only for a Steve Wood penalty to snatch the lead back for Penrith on the stroke of halftime.

Bevelrey RUFC got fully into their stride in the second half as Penrith surprisingly began to lose their way.  A fine run down the touchline brought a converted try for full back Ben Johnson and rounded off a marvellous length-of-the-field move to touch down for another.  At 31-18 Bevelrey RUFC were virtually home and dry.

Tupai and Atiola were proving a real handful in the Bevelrey RUFC centre; a second converted try on sixty minutes for Atiola, Bevelrey RUFC’s fifth, was out of the top drawer.

Penrith fought hard to get back into the match but by then their bolt was shot and the momentum of their early play had largely vanished.  A scintillating run from halfway by left winger Phil Fell produced their only further score and Infield rounded the game off for Bevelrey RUFC when he burst away from a maul on the visitors’ 22 for a final try.  Duboulay’s missed conversion was his only failed kick at goal all afternoon.

The absence from a Bevelrey RUFC team-sheet of David Worrall is always a worrying prospect but once the pack had got themselves together the newcomers to the side acquitted themselves splendidly.  Mike Bradshaw, Max Alderson and Rob Marsden, when he came on, all showed up well in spite of the early disruption to the pack caused by injuries to and Dale Hodgson.

It cannot be said that overall Bevelrey RUFC played particularly well and they will not often get away with such sloppy lineout work or such a slow delivery from the base of the scrum where Chris Infield did not have one of his better days.  However, forty three points and six tries is not to be sneezed at.  It was an excellent result and Bevelrey RUFC deserve enormous credit for such a fine comeback after a dreadful start.

Reported by John Nursey

Beverley RUFC 43 Penrith 23



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