2/3s overcome deficit to win

Nice photo

We took on a large Blaydon Bricks squad today after winning the previous week against Rockliffe 3's 20-12.

The Blaydon squad was large in relation to numbers (30+ I reckon) but in particular the physical size of their the front 5 forwards.

We had a squad of about 20 players with our usual mix of experienced players, Colts / students and guys in their 20s.

Director of 2/3s rugby; David 'Jose Mouriniho' Ditchburn was happy with the quality of the team except for the coach's selection of himself at 10.

However Padget agreed not to kick to everyone's general relief or at least those who had seen him kick at Acklam.

The game quickly turned into a contest of how well our pack could defend against Blaydon's set piece dominance versus our clear edge when we ran the ball through our backs.

We posed a definite threat in particular through centres Stephenson, and McNay who broke the gain line and ran skilfully throughout the game

However we couldn't quite finish off moves were as Balydon were always dangerous with set pieces of any kind in our 22.

They turned around 12-0 up.

The team talk urged the forwards to keep up the very hard work and guarantee the backs some ball.

Our forwards led as ever by Black and Cogden dug in and did exactly that.

Good ball and great handling led to an impressive individual try from Aaron Stevenson as he ran straight leaving tacklers in his wake from around 30-40 metres out.

Soon after a nice called back move saw Dan McNay sprint from the half way line, round the full back to score under the posts.

This put the score at 14-12 to us but at this stage Blaydon put us under exerted pressure near our line for 5-10 mins.

Our forwards and Woody our scrum half worked hard to see us clear our lines and then score a great try with all our backs passing to put a flying Danny Hinder to score another try from the half way line.

It was an impressive score and Mr Hinder was an equally impressive role model for Weightwatchers today (over a stone loss) with his running and kicking.

Final Score 19-12

Highlights

The name 'Dan', read the report again you'll get it.

Backs handling and running best at 2/3s level for Sunderland I've seen for a while.

Defence from forwards in 2nd half. They were under the cosh particularly in the scrum which they struggled to just to hang on at times but it kept us in game when it looked as though Blaydon would pull away.

The tries; they were surprisingly very good, all of them.

Lowlights

None I can think of except for Danny Hinder's missed conversion in front of the posts, why take it all the way back from the 22?

Scorers: Tries; Stevenson, McNay, Hinder. Conversions; Hinder (2)

MoM: Lots of candidates: Stevenson, McNay, Fraser, Wood, Black, Hinder, Cogden all came close for me, but student Dan (aka Ben) Stephenson was worthy MoM