South pipped in the North East.

South travelled north to Morpeth's scenic and well appointed Mitford Road ground for their first round National trophy game. Any hopes, however, of a positive result for South were dispelled as early as the 20th minute when the referee and his co officials lost the plot and subsequently lost control of the game. Always a tell tale sign when poor officials concentrate on penalising the technical aspects of the game and ignore the underlying foul play and intimidatory tactics employed by the home side. Just like Arsene Wenger they didn't see anything untoward.
South were 12 -3 down at half time playing into a stiff breeze, on the scoresheet only by virtue of a Mark Lord penalty. Coach Mitch Read's half time team talk was unprintable, but it had the required effect with South coming out fired up and taking the game to the hosts. Two Mark Lord penalties, a Kris McFredries storming try down the left wing converted by Lord, put South marginally in the lead. Matt Jinks the Morpeth no 10 (who put in a great display of place kicking throughout) nudged the home side back into the lead with an hour gone.
South were at last leaving the lactic acid on the mini bus and surged upfield in a number of raids on the Morpeth line. Eventually the Morpeth defence split resulting in a hard running Rich Lang try left of the posts. Lord narrowly missed the conversion which would have probably sealed the game.
South were still not out of the woods being within one score range for the opposition. The aforementioned match officials then contrived to award Morpeth a penalty for encroachment by the South backs, leading to a converted try and conversion to win the match. Strangely enough, the full time whistle went directly after the score without taking into consideration any injury time.
The galling aspect of the whole trip was the the constant, blatant and dangerous late tackling of the Morpeth no 7 who wasn't penalised once, the home sides constant challenging of decisions and a small minority of the home support who reminded the smaller than usual South faithful of attitudes personified in recent away trips to Dunstablians, Newport and Scunthorpe. The officials weren't up to the task in any way, shape or form and failed to deal effectively with the overphysical aspects of the game. As it was a broken hand for Ash Stevens was the only souvenir worthy of note from our Northumberland mini bus excursion.

Match Report:Phil Lord