South shine in sunny scunny!

South Shine in Sunny Scunny (The sun did actually shine)

South Leicester visited Heslam Park home of Scunthorpe RFC for the first time in a number of seasons. Changes on the teamsheet were various with James Stapleford out injured replaced by Len Fincham while Phil Daffern and Wayne Brooks made their seasonal debuts on the bench.
Captain Mike March was also out from injury and spent three hours in traffic on the A1 entertaining coach Ian Smith with his wit and banter!
Both arrived late to witness the latest South onslought.

South made the running from the word go moving the ball wide at every opportunity. Against the wind wing Nick Childs got over wide on the left after some strong work from Dan Holmes and Matt Fisher. Mark Lord converted. Joe Gavin followed with an unconverted try soon after as the South backs tore holes in the home defence. Matt Fisher then used his lightning pace to latch onto a sublime Connor Smith chip to score South’s next unconverted try wide on the right.
The Uncompromising Scunthorpe side came back with an unconverted try of their own from winger James Wade and two penalties from fly half Mark Woollard. South responded by two excellent support tries from Josh McLaurin, the first converted by Lord, as they opened a significant gap over their Lincolnshire opponents. McLaurin was injured in scoring his second try with Gavin moving to the back row, Childs moving in to outside centre, Smith to inside centre and Phil Daffern taking his place on the left wing.
Scunthorpe responded by scoring another try by Wade and converted another penalty by Woollard to stay in the hunt as half time was reached with a score of 19-29. The score at that time didn’t really reflect South’s “bonus point” gaining superiority.

Connor Smith got in on the try scoring act just after half time converted by Lord while Wayne Brooks joined the fray as Gavin limped off injured. This seemed to galvanise Scunthorpe back into action and with the elusive Vaimoso to the fore Wade scored his third try, Chris Neal added a try with Woollard converting to trim the lead to five points. South did well to stem the tide with Sam Badham and Wes Cartwright fighting hard to offset the enforced changes. Marcus Badham replaced Dom Green with ten minutes left and the home sides momentum wilted. Up stepped captain for the day Mark Lord to slot two penalties moving the visitors score onto 42 -31 and the final victorious whistle.

Without being unkind South at the moment are doing a passable impression of Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle Utd. Scoring tries at will , but conceding more than a few. The enforced changes due to injury in the game upset both the rhythm and the South game plan which didn’t help the cause.

Back on track South look forward to the visit of high flyers Bromsgrove and adding to the seventeen tries already in the bag.

Team: Holmes, Fisher, Smith, Gavin (Daffern), Childs, Lord ©, McFedries, Bale C, Cartwright, McLaurin (Brookes), Antill, Badham S, Fincham, Green (Badham M) Robson.

Men of the Match: The original backrow of Josh McLaurin (two good tries) Chris Bale (some excellent bullocking runs off the base of the scrum) and Wes Cartwright .He was everywhere and did a passable impression of Neil Back stripping the ball off opponents before they hit the ground on more than one occasion.