Seaford Down to 14 Men But Still Too Strong for Holbrook

Pack leader Dan Newby got the home side off to a fast start when he noticed a miss match on the blind side of a ruck. Steve Dann stepped through the Holbrook defense and released the ball to Newby who confidently finished things off.

The next 10 minutes saw the best rugby of the game, as the home side punctured the Holbrook line repeatedly. Cox scored with a penalty kick before the exciting Josh Sheppard got around the away sides defense to add a try. Cox increased the advantage to fifteen by adding a conversion.

The visitors began to rely on their pack to answer Seaford’s early dominance but the tactic failed to pay off. The Scarlet pack more than held their own in the scrum and out witted their opponents in the lineouts. Although Seaford didn’t help themselves, as they overplayed the ball in their 22, Holbrook couldn’t make their pressure count. Eventually the away team resorted to kicking for points and made the score 15 to 3, after twenty minutes.

Out of their half and with the ball in hand Seaford almost instantly replied when the ball went wide, before coming back inside to Captain Paul Burns who powered over the line.

When Cox kicked to make the score 22 – 3 everything looked great for the Scarlets. However, things changed in a ‘red’ flash, when an altercation resulted in a nasty gash for a Holbrook player and a red card for Lock, Ben Lane. Before the break Holbrook made the one man advantage count scoring their first try.

Seaford were asked to hit back hard at their opponents and they duly delivered when Sheppard scored his second try of the afternoon. While many sides may have given in, Holbrook came straight back scoring an unconverted try.

A man down in the scrum, Seaford continued to scramble well but when Piers Culshaw was sent to the Sin Bin Holbrook capitalised. Seaford’s 13 men saw their lead narrowed by two scores (to 9 points) before Culshaw returned.

As the pressure grew Chris Burns effectively killed the game off with two scores of his own. Firstly an intercepted pass saw Burns brake free, running 50 yards to place the ball down between the posts, then Burns worked with full back Mike Crowley to finish again. Cox finished things off with two more conversions before a the bad tempered contest was ended by the referee.

MOM: Dan Newby - In games like this Newby digs deep and pulls out his best performances, this week Dan encouraged a fine performance from the pack as well.

Team:

1. Steve Parker
2. Steve Dann
3. John Wilson
4. Ben Lane
5. Sam Diplock
6. Mike Upton
7. Piers Culshaw
8. Dan Newby
9. Paul Hardwick
10. Ben Cox
11. Scott Voice
12. Paul Burns
13. Chris Burns
14. Josh Sheppard
15. Mike Crowley

16. Mark Tait
17. Richard Foster
18. Phil Innis