Braves Show Guts Against Holderness Vikings

 

Something that has typified the season so far for the Beverley Braves U12s has been their gutsy performances when the chips are down and this latest match at home to Holderness Viking was a great example of that. Already depleted by other commitments, this time of the Mother’s Day variety rather than other codes of football, the thirteen that turned out on the day were down to twelve before half-time. With George Bennett-Teare hobbling off with one toe a significantly different colour to the rest of him with the Braves 12-0 down, soon to be 18 and looking to be in a very difficult position.

Beverley conceded two tries before they had touched the ball, both on the back of repeat sets one from a drop out, the other from a penalty, to make it 12-0l and they desperately needed some time on the ball to steady the ship. Once they got this with Oliver Loney once again driving the ball up strongly alongside Ethan Rowbotham the Braves began to get better field position on the back of Marcus Walker’s long down field kicks and a great chase. One of these chases from Dylan English resulted in the Vikings full-back pinned back on his ten metres line, and another saw Rowbotham gather the bouncing ball and was only stopped from a clear break by a great Holderness tackle.

With parity in possession, Beverley began to look dangerous with the ball in hand and when Matthew Hutchinson slipped the ball in the tackle, this allowed scrum-half Lewis Egan to ship the ball to the left, the move broke down with a knock-on but the Braves began to realise what they could do. Holderness held on and replied with interest when they also kept the ball alive well scoring in the right-hand corner, a superb conversion made it 18-0 at half-time. However, the Braves now down to 12 men with no substitutes available still had the belief in what they could do it.

During the second half, Beverley upped their defensive effort, which had already been pretty good in the first half. Centre Tom Cohen and wing Harry Newton defended their side brilliantly with little getting past them as they mopped up any misses between them. On the other wing, Ryan Deane showed some neat touches with the ball in hand and defended equally as well alongside William Kirkup, who continues to improve with every match he plays.

An advantage of having a small squad does mean some of the fringe players get more time on the field and several have grown in confidence as a result of this, none more than Ollie Gresswell, who put in his best tackle count in his time at the Braves. However, it was in the middle where the tough work was done with half-backs Walker and Egan putting in an immense amount of tackles the former making three tackles on the bounce several times and the latter topping the tackle count – not bad for a lad who makes Rob Burrow look 7 feet tall.

The moment of the match for the Braves came as the strong defence kept pushing the Vikings back and hooker Jack Turner took the ball after a one-on-one steal to race 50 metres and touchdown. Walker’s conversion made it 6-18. The Braves were pretty much on top now and as the big tackles continued to go in Holderness were visibly rattled despite playing with the extra man and began to concede numerous penalties.

It looked like the Braves were going to hang on for a morale boosting ‘second-half’ victory when the Vikings finally used their extra man to race clear and score under the posts to make the score 6-24 right on the final whistle. The Beverley lads can, however, be proud of their efforts and be sure there will be more victories to come on the evidence of this performance against one of the league’s strongest teams.

Choosing a man of the match was difficult with Egan, Loney, Rowbotham, Walker, English and Turner all in with a shout – so the coaches left the decision to the referee who gave it to Turner, his second man of the match in four games.

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