South collect some away day Christmas cheer at Hinckley's expense.

While it has to be acknowledged that local rivals Hinckley have a deep injury crisis at the moment, South were also affected badly with top scorer Lee Robinson, Josh McLaurin, line out leader Will Ward, the Owens brothers Will and Jack, Joe Lamb, Will Cave and Aaron Langan all missing. The bench was made up of Kyle Merrigan, Seb Green and young Tom Heggs.

South kicked off with both the strong breeze and the slope and tore into the opposition, no doubt courtesy of a dynamic warm up lead by the coaching staff and vocal volunteer Pete Bale. As early as the first minute Mark Lord had a chance with a penalty. His attempt was blown narrowly wide, but he succeeded in two further attempts shortly after to take South into a quickfire six point lead. The home side were further disadvantaged as centre Ryan Oakes was yellow carded for an unlawful tackle. South capitalised on the numerical mismatch for Gareth Kerr, after a slick ACT midfield move, to score in the left hand corner. Lord’s conversion again was blown wide.
Concerted pressure from South at both scrum and line out, where George Ord won some quality possession, kept Hinckley pinned in their own 22 metre area. Constant pressure at the breakdown with the backrow of Simon Johnson, Chris Bale and Rhoddy McNaughton to the fore enabled Kerr to add his second try as he stepped his way through some half hearted tackles to score under the posts. Lord routinely converted and South lead 18-0 in as many minutes. Johnson and Hinckley’s Steve Morfill were yellow carded for a bout of handbags as the home side regrouped and put together some good phases of play for Joe Doyle to score his debut try. Tom Moxon missed the conversion agains’t the wind.
Hinckley again dominated to score their second try via full back Rich Harris to get them back into the game although Moxon again had difficulty with the wind as the conversion was held up. After only thirty minutes play twenty eight points had been scored, but the game then entered a phase of midfield arm wrestling. Both sides vying for the advantage with some hard fought forward contact and some big hits in defence. The interval was reached with no additional score, although South now had to face the breeze and the slope leading 10-18.

It was hard for South to make progress initially in the half as some wayward kicking cancelled out any advantage. However, a series of penalties kicked to the corner and successful lineouts moved the visitors into the home red zone. Catch and drives and the effective rolling maul put Hinckley under severe pressure. From a five metre scrum against the head Luke Coltman struck to enable Chris Bale to go over for the pushover try. Lord converted to take South out to a fifteen point lead.
As it turned out this was the crucial score as Hinckley threw the kitchen sink at South for the remainder of the half. They turned down a number of kickable penalties to run the ball at every opportunity in order to make up the deficit. Unfortunately, they came up against a South defence that was probably at its best. Huge hits from Andy Gates and the Bale brothers forced mistakes from the home side as they battered away at the South line. Try saving tackles from Mark Lord, Connor Smith and Dave Weston kept Hinckley out. Break outs from Danny Graney, Stu Bale and Keiran Stone shifted the pressure while Ricky Aley (who took over the kicking duties after Lord turned an ankle) missed a late penalty. Stu Bale was sin binned late on for trying to stop a certain try adjudged illegal by the referee.
Smith and Lord eventually retired due to injury while McNaughton returned to the dark recess of the front row enabling Seb Green, Kyle Merrigan and Tom Heggs to take their place for the final throes of the game. Hinckley continued pressing, but South heroically held out. A well deserved victory after absorbing considerable pressure in order to prevent the home side from converting that pressure into points. Not many sides will nil Hinckley in a second half, especially when down to 14 men for the last ten minutes, outlining South’s collective determination to take victory. Well done to all.

The whole South side played with a commitment and passion of old, although Chris Bales huge hit on home counterpart Ben Ashfield lead the way and no doubt galvanised the collective South desire to come away from Leicester Road with a victory to celebrate over the Christmas break.

South now look forward to the new year with an increased level of confidence taken from this game which was celebrated immediately both by the players and the South faithful alike.

Happy Christmas and Hoorah!

Squad: Graney, Weston, Smith (Heggs), Gates, Kerr, Lord (Green) Aley, Bale C, Johnson, McNaughton, Bale S, Ord, Hopkins (Merrigan), Coltman, Stone