Sunderland 2s comeback to win at Blyth

Sunderland 2s as ever turned up with a much changed team from the one that lost at South Shields the previous week.

I now have this sentence on permanent cut and paste whenever I write a 2s report.

In the back line Dan McNay and Aidan Maclennan retained their places.

In the forwards we saw much greater stability however we were missing Andy Black, Sam Marshall and Jossi Wright from the previous week.

In the pack we saw 5 colts start with a further 3 in the back line.

There was a bright side to these multiple changes that saw Nathan Forster at 10, as he puts more game time in after his return to injury, and Marc Edmundson start at 9.

Harry Price also shifted position and gave inside centre a go.

An injury to Elliot Lewandoski in the warm up saw Chirs Little move from back row to outside centre.

We scored an early try through Edmundson after a good run and dummy from Jamie Sword.

We were keen to keep the tempo of the game high, given we felt Blyth's pack had a edge in size on us.

However if anything we were guilty of playing too much running rugby which led to a number of errors that Blyth were quick to capitalise on.

Blyth increasingly created pressure which we struggled to match and as a result Blyth scored two short range tries which left the score at 10-7 at half time.

An Edmundson last gasp tackle kept Blyth at bay from further scoring

The half time team talk focused on the belief if we could keep playing positive rugby we would score.

Dan McNay made a great tackle early in the 2nd half to prevent a runaway score and from there we increasingly began to dominate the match.

Despite the back line we had, we never quite clicked although we benefitted from Nathan Forster's boot that made us impressive yardage from penalty kicks.

However our pack by now was making significant yards against a tiring Blyth with Hanlon, Sword , Dodds and Little at centre making good charges and finding gaps.

Hanlon scored a great try with a well timed run from a tap penalty off Padget.

Then Jamie Back scored two very well taken tries out on the left wing for both. I've no idea why he was there as he was playing 2nd row .

I've played with some decent forwards who used to to routinely do this and then claim they were great readers of the game (as opposed to being just tired) so may be Jamie knows what he's doing.

The game ended with us very much in charge as McNay notched a number of penalty kicks to improve our score.

MoM: Ki Hanlon, Jamie Sword, Dan McNay and Nathan Forster all played well but the award went deservedly to Jamie Back. Less of the football style celebrations next time you score though!