South use this season's "get out of jail free card" in order to beat Longton in a dire game.

South entertained old rivals Longton at Welford Road in the first of the reverse fixtures in N3M. Both teams paid their respects to long serving South member Alan Cocks who passed away during this last week before engaging in, what turned out to be, a dire struggle on a sticky surface, in front of smaller than normal crowd.
Gareth Clarke, Connor Smith and Simon Johnson were replaced in the South starting line up by Dave Weston, Sam Greasley and Aaron Turner respectively while Mark Bayley joined Chris Bale and Danny Graney on the bench.

South v Longton games have always been close and this was no exception as both teams tried to gain the upper hand. Longton could have taken the lead early on, but a penalty was pushed wide. South came back with a number of excursions into the visitors red zone, but after making good ground couldn’t exploit the situation and gave away penalties enabling Longton to relieve the pressure. Josh McLaurin was unlucky to be penalised for a double movement after going close. Sam Greasley did open South’s account with a strong barging run through and over several defenders before touching down. Dave Weston gave the scoring pass although Joe Glover couldn’t add the conversion.
Longton came back and added a penalty to take the score to 5-3 just in South’s favour. An attempted drop goal and pressure from the visitors lead to the referee sin binning both Greasley and McLaurin to reduce South to thirteen men just before half time. The visitors took advantage of the numerical mismatch to score two tries, one converted, either side of the interval to move their advantage onto 5-15. South replaced Keiran Stone with Mark Bayley at half time.

A penalty, soon after the interval, by Glover was apparently good, but overruled by the visiting linesman, so South still had a mountain to climb.
Chris Bale replaced Aaron Turner on the hour, which immediately paid dividends as the visitors were pushed back over their own line for McLaurin to touch down for a try. Glover couldn’t add the extras.
Longton were still in the game, but the momentum was now with South, until McLaurin was deemed to have stamped on, in a ruck, a Longton player and was red carded. Winger Gareth Kerr was withdrawn to enable Turner to return to keep the full compliment of forwards as the majority of the game revolved around the strength of the relative packs.
South were still five points adrift as the game went to the wire and they threw everything into gaining the win. A series of penalties (no yellow cards though) and the resultant scrummage option close to the Longton line eventually lead to a somewhat reluctant referee awarding South a penalty try to draw level. Glover added the straightforward conversion, the final whistle blew and South got home by the skin of their teeth 17-15.

It’s safe to say that South didn’t play well collectively and like the Tigers in Italy they also upset the referee. It’s also safe to say that Mr Clarkson won’t be high on either South’s or Longton’s christmas card list this year!

To play under the standard expected and still win in this league is a bonus – a win being a win.
However, please, get it right next week at Broad Street to enable a third place league position at Christmas so hopefully we can push on in the new year.

Squad: Weston, Kerr, Keeling, Gates, Greasley, Lord, Glover, McLaurin, Miller, Turner, Hurst, Bale S, Harris, Coltman ©, Stone, Bayley, Bale C, Graney.