Christmas came early for Sheffield Tigers when Jamie Broadley was gifted the ball on halfway and ran in under the posts in the 1st minute. Mark Ireland landed the conversion to give the home side a 7-point lead and a great boost to their confidence.
Dale looked to have bounced back into the game with 11 phases in Sheffield’s 22 and very nearly crossing the line. The home defence was strong and the sustained attack ended with a knock on.
The rest of the first half was a rather unexceptional affair with neither side mounting any serious threat into the opposition’s 22. Wharfedale’s discipline, however, cost them dearly. They gave away 5 scrum penalties with Ireland converting 3 of them to keep the scoreboard ticking over. Ireland’s fourth successful penalty was after an infringement that saw Rob Baldwin getting a yellow card. This gave Sheffield a comfortable lead of 19 points at half-time.
Seven minutes into the second half another scrum penalty was coupled with a Yellow Card to Joe Altham. Then disaster struck. Tigers nudged the touch kick up to Dale’s 10-metre line. Wharfedale chose not to engage at the line-out but Sheffield kept the ball at the front and rampaged up field. By the time Dale engaged they could not stop the drive and Louis Townsend was awarded the try.
Only now, trailing by 26 points, did Dale start playing some rugby. Under pressure the home side now started to creak and had two of their players yellow carded. Wharfedale pressed into the home 22 and Oscar Canny burst through the defence to touch down. Tom Mann added the extras. More good pressure from Dale led to a Sam Gaudie converted try. In between the tries Ireland slotted another penalty.
Dale carried on playing well but the match ended with another long range-attack by Sheffield from half-way and good hands and support play led to an unconverted try for winger Simon Frewin.
Not a convincing performance from the Green Machine but there were moments of promise and hope. Only 50% of Dale’s line-outs were successful; this can be remedied in training; the scrums ended up as a bit of a lottery with both sides getting pinged. Dale were unlucky as their infringements led to points on the board for Sheffield.
Wharfedale Head Coach, Simon Verbickas, said after the match “firstly congratulations to the Foresters for a well-deserved win away to Sheffield 2’s with some very strong individual performances from Elliot Stockton, James Coulton, Max Bell and Owen Bullough with a hat trick to name just a few from a tremendous overall team performance.
Unfortunately, the 1st team were unable to repeat the same against an excellent Tigers team.
The early try conceded in the first minute seemed to dent the confidence far too much and we struggled to recover at all in that first half. We struggled to gain any real momentum at any point and without it the game is hard to control and confidence gets lower.
A much better second half performance but far too much to do to recover the game in any way. We made more errors trying to chase the game but the endeavour to keep going and playing is there which is a positive thing”.
Wharfedale R. Davidson; Prell (Beesley 53), Canny, Cicognini, Bullough; Mann, Macnab (Gaudie 30); Beesley (Altham 30, Prell 62, Kaup-Samuels), Speres 9 (Wright 53), Dickinson (Altham 74), Leacock, Green (Borrill 62), Baldwin (Speres), Carlson, Burridge (c)