Lord seals South victory over leaders Longton

While Loughborough Students, Leicester Lions and Syston were all losing South were victorious against league leaders Longton.
Dan Holmes came into the side with Phil Daffern reverting to the bench.
The club welcomed Italian referee Simone Colantonio to Welford Road. The wintery weather conditions had relented and the game was played on a dry day, although a little sticky underfoot.

Mark Lord kicked South to a 15-13 victory.
The visitors did manage to outscore South by two rolling maul tries to none, but they had no answer to the steady stream of points from the South fly half as he kept the scoreboard ticking over for his side.
Lord slotted five penalties in all opening the scoring with his first in the ninth minute. Longton hooker George Glenn went over for a try before Lord struck twice more. Scott Rawlings then kicked a penalty for the visitors before Lord added another to make the half time score 12-8.
Lord struck his fifth penalty on 45 minutes and despite replacement Matt Davies going over for Longton the home side battled hard to earn the victory.
Lord had another long range penalty land just short with 10 minutes to go which would have put the icing on the cake, but it wasn’t to be and South held on to the narrowest of victories.

Although South were given a lesson at scrummage time their excellent defence was the basis of this hard earned victory, never taking a backward step, under some duress. The back row especially of Josh McLaurin, Chris Bale and skipper Mike March were relentless in disrupting Longton’s attacking ambitions while the back line drifted to good effect snuffing out any wide Longton attacks.
It was a war of attrition from two well matched sides centred around forward domination. Aspirations to go wide from both sides were limited by rustiness in handling after the weather induced lay off and the sticky conditions.

South continue their quest for further league points at Broadstreet next week (weather permitting)

Team: Griffin, Childs, Smith, Holmes, Fisher, Lord, McFedries, Bale C, March ©, McLaurin (Cartwright), Antill, Badham S, Truijens (Robson) Green, Stapleford.
Unused Replacement: Daffern.

Man of the Match: Mark Lord.