Ryton II 7 - 29 Sunderland II

After a warm up riddled with mistakes and dropped balls, an expansive pitch on a sunny day led to the backs having a great day in the office. Gary Roberts maintained his fantastic form to open the scoring by exploiting a gap in the Ryton defence to great effect and scoring his first try of the day.

The game continued with Sunderland being far and away the better side, in attack and defence. And when Roberts made another break down the middle the evergreen Michael Brace was on hand to support, and the defenders couldn’t stop the Porsche-like juggernaut that he became from blasting over the try line and scoring.

Sunderland didn’t stop there, with Sam Jordan touching down in the corner after a good foundation built up from the forwards hard work, then John Padgett went through a gap created by Duncan Bain to touch down near the post. Dan Hinder added two conversions and Sunderland went into half time 24-0 up.

In the second half the game continued as it had left off. Michael Heffernan got a good break down the middle and despite support from Bain and Paul Hands at fullback went on his own, but was adjudged to have been held up by the covering defender by the time the referee reached the scene.

At this point Ryton started to apply more pressure. And it was from this that Roberts actually got to score his second try. He pressured the centre well in his own 22. The ball was spilled and hacked on by Roberts, who then touched down for Sunderland’s final score of the game.

Ryton then camped in the Sunderland half for the rest of the game. After giving away a lot of soft penalties and Rytong being fortunate with some debatable knock-ons the pressure paid off, and they scored with effectively the last play of the game for the match to end 29-7.