South surrender at dismal and dull Kettering

South travelled to Waverley Road hopeful of maintaining the good standard of play exhibited in the opening period of last week’s game versus Luton. They, however, came down to earth with a crash to post their third defeat on the bounce to a decidedly average home side - who admittedly scored two good tries - but were gifted two by the ineptly generous South defence.
Matt Clark returned from injury, Matt Trebetherick made his debut in the troublesome inside centre position while Max Castrogiovanni returned from his latest sojourn to Coventry to a place on the bench.

The game and the weather was decidedly dull from the word go as referee Karl Kirkpatrick from Warrington let the home side do what they wanted all afternoon as feeding, coming in from the side, offside and dropping the maul were all met with a shrug and a play on call. Unfortunately, he was completely out of his depth at this level which meant South were in for a torrid time as the home side bullied their way to victory. To compound matters Chris Bale was punched out of the game by a Noble Kettering Neanderthal just before half time as the referee lost complete control.
Manager Pete Bale being banished from the playing area for complaining too vociferously to the delight of the home faithful.
South only had a few strong forward rushes with Mark Bayley, Dom Green and Gaz Jones to show for their efforts and their demise was complete when any ball flung wide was either fumbled or lost to the opposition.
Why an earth we continue to attack down the 13 channel when its plainly obvious that we cannot keep possession and don’t have the attacking flair to make ground, never mind score, I don’t know!
We were moderately more successful closer to our forward protection and South’s strength.

Overall a bad day at the office as nobody was worthy of a man of the match award. In fact, nobody really turned up and wanted to compete with the aggressive and more than uncompromising approach of the home side.

Lets hope Mr Kirkpatrick stays officiating in his native North West as on today’s showing he would even have trouble keeping control on the corridors of his local IKEA store. Lets hope (forlornly) the assessor agrees and Pigs might Fly!

Team: Clarke, Griffin (Devaney), Lang, Jordan, Lord, McFedries, C Bale (Castrogiovanni), C Mark, March ©, S Bale, Antill, Bayley, Green, Jones (Fincham)