Sunderland fall short but do club proud

Sunderland 2s brought their season to a close (more or less) with a well deserved appearance in the county cup final versus Mowden 3s.

Mowden themselves were the current holders of the cup and made the final after beating Blaydon Development, 20-10 in the corresponding semi final.

Sunderland lined up with a squad of 22, all lads who have played 2s throughout the season.

We had a classic mix of young and old, Marshall (snr), Padget and Black adding 140 years to the team in addition to 3 colts starting and a further 3 colts on the bench.

The coach sensed some nerves in the warm up (and had some himself) however the opening 10 minutes saw us fly out of the blocks with a series of full blooded carries into the Mowden pack.

We were awarded with a number of penalties which saw the captain decline points and increase pressure by kicks to the corner.

From this pressure we scored a pushover try.

The fact we did this has been well and extensively recorded to say the least (Messrs Hirst and Marshall).

However a couple of factors to be highlighted: 1) I could feel us rattling Mowden in the contact area and when we scored I wasn't actually surprised 2) Mowden had some big lads and our front row (Tom, Jossi, Deano) were smaller, it was a pretty good achievement.

No more to be said on that! (Please)

Despite our great start Mowden began developing 2 aspects of their game which stretched us; their line out and them bringing in their forwards into the back line.

Dom Younger and Nelly Wright kept us in the game with a series of desperate tackles to stop a number of try scoring opportunities. Henry McNally also made a great tackle to prevent what seemed a likely try.

Despite this Mowden managed to score two tries as the game developed a pattern of Mowden attacking out wide and via line outs where as we attacked predominantly around the ruck area.

Half time 12-7 to Mowden

The second half followed a similar pattern and a couple of scores from them saw us on the rack.

I remember a critical scrum with Mr James Cogden pulling us together and urge us to give that bit more.

From there we ran from our own half up the blind side up with carries from Hinder, Padget and Black.

This saw the ball into the Mowden 22, a mazy run from Col Wallace saw him evade a number of tackles to score a great individual and team try (if that's possible?)

This brought the score to 24-12.

By this stage this felt like real end to end rugby with lots of tackles flying about.

The coach has to say I was very proud at this part of the game that we continued to front up and kept up with the physical / contact part of the game.

We again attempted to attack the blindside from scrums but Mowden capitalised on spilled ball to score a breakaway try and take the game definitively away from us with 10-15 mins to go.

Final score 29-12 Mowden.

MoM: loads of candidates I thought with Wallace, Black and Younger coming close but a joint award goes to Cogden and Hirst who grafted for full 80 and gave us a platform to be so competitive.

My thanks to everyone who has played 2s this season it's been great overall and bodes extremely well for next season. Onwards and upwards!