South catch a cold at local rivals Hinckley and it was cold!.

South travelled the short distance to local rivals Hinckley hopeful of extending their recent unbeaten run of games. Rhod McNaughton started at prop replacing Andy Harris and Will Ward came in for Stu Bale who reverted to the bench to be joined by Danny Graney and Len Fincham.

On a bitterly cold day South started strongly and pressured the home side, especially in the scrum, while making inroads into the home defence. Joe Glover scored a try on the left to open the scoring though his conversion fell short held up by the blustery wind. South made a mess of the restart and conceded an immediate penalty which home full back Josh Smith converted.
South kept up the pressure with Mark Lord charging down a Hinckley clearance kick to keep the game based in the Hinckley 22. Sam Greasley had a guilt edged chance to add to the South score after entering the line at pace. He unfortunately knocked on with the line at his mercy. South were eventually rewarded as Glover stroked over a penalty for the visitors to take a 3-8 lead after the first quarter.
Smith converted two more penalties to take the home side into a narrow 9-8 lead and worse was to follow as home centre Ryan Oakes broke through some weak South first up tackles to score under the posts. Smith added the straightforward conversion to give the home side a 16-8 advantage at the interval.

No doubt South were given a roasting by coach Steve Booth at the break and almost immediately South scored in the top corner following a series of penalties and line outs. Luke Coltman took advantage to swop passes at a short line out to go over. The difficult conversion from Glover was again blown wide, but South were back in the game at 16-13. Danny Graney and Stu Bale entered the game for Gareth Clarke and Dan Hurst respectively and both made an immediate impact.
Hinckley lost lock Alex Salt to the sin bin and South immediately took advantage to gain a Penalty Try on the hour as the home pack buckled under the pressure.
Glover added the straightforward conversion to move South out to a 16-20 lead.
Almost immediately the home side responded with ex South player Mitch Culpin setting up Phil Brocken for a try which exposed South’s poor defence once again.
Smith missed the conversion, but added a penalty to move the score out to 24-20 in the home teams favour.
In the last ten minutes South threw the kitchen sink at Hinckley and were camped permanently on the home try line. Coltman was denied another try as he lost control over the line while Chris Bale, Simon Johnson and Stu Bale all went close or were held up over the line by the ever desperate home defence. South had better claims for a penalty try than the one that was awarded earlier, then came the mysterious hand in the scrum!
Awarded a five metre scrum on the South put in, the ball was handled in the front row, the referee saw it and mistakenly awarded a penalty to Hinckley when it was obvious from the side line who the offender was as he was wearing a yellow and black shirt! From the resultant kick to touch the game ended on a sour note.
A calamitous error from the official that probably cost South the game as they had the ascendancy in the scrum throughout the game.

Unfortunately South didn’t have a good day in many other areas of the game giving away too many kickable penalties and failing to defend adequately with some poor one on one tackling. They seemed collectively flat and failed to put together any consistent phases of play which have been the hallmark of many games this season. They didn’t deal well with the pressure exerted in the loose play by Hinckley as both they and their supporters influenced the referee.

In some ways this sort of performance was coming after playing poorly for all or some of the game versus Longton and Broad Street before Christmas and still winning. It caught up with South in this game.

This reverse would be against one of South’s closest rivals geographically while the South faithful had to pay the highest league entrance price to witness it!

Squad: Clarke (Graney), Kerr, Keeling, Gates, Greasley, Lord, Glover, Bale C, Johnson, Miller, Hurst (Bale S), Ward, McNaughton, Coltman ©, Stone.
Unused replacement: Fincham.