Mowden Park 12 v Rosslyn Park 24

A clinical display of attack and defence were the cornerstones of Rosslyn Park RFC’s victory over DMPRFC at the Northern Echo Arena.

Although never extended by a somewhat lacklustre first half performance by the home team, Rosslyn Park RFC showed why they are in the silver medal spot in National League One.

DMPRFC showed flashes of what they are capable of, but a combination of stoic and well marshalled defence, together with some wrong options all conspired to restrict the home side to 2 tries, when there were opportunities for more.

Taking nothing away from Rosslyn Park RFC, they were ably led again by their very influential No.8 and together with his back row colleagues, dominated the breakdown, where the home side were simply not able to gain possession of the ball.

Rosslyn Park RFC opened the scoring, when the home side were penalised at the contact area for going in from the side and the visitors chose to kick for the corner. A clean catch and powerful drive was initially thwarted by a defiant home defence, but further pressure at the maul was applied, heralding a touchdown for their loose-head prop (0 – 5).

On the 10-minute mark, a clean break from home skipper Cameron MITCHELL was hacked on by full back Henry ROBINSON. The visitors failed to deal with it and fumbled, resulting in an attacking scrum, from which winger Tom KILL muscled his way over under the posts (5 – 5). The conversion was easy for Garry LAW (7 – 5), putting DMPRFC in front for the first and only time in the game.

Within a further 5 minutes, Rosslyn Park RFC were back in front, when their powerful left wing forced his way over, after a series of pick and drives from his forwards (7 – 10), converted by their fly half (7 – 12).

DMPRFC were contributing, but were restricted to electric bursts from their back line, as clean ball from their forwards was not forthcoming in the contact areas.

This was emphasised 10 minutes before oranges, when the Rosslyn Park RFC skipper touched down with a pushover try (7 – 17), giving the visitors a comfortable lead going into the break.

A very sizeable crowd, easily the biggest in the league on the day, were expecting DMPRFC to cut loose after oranges, but it was Rosslyn Park RFC who again scored first, effectively sealing the win with another member of their front row union bullocking over, this time their tight-head (7 – 22). Again the conversion was successful (7 – 24).

It was clear that if DMPRFC were to get anything from the game, that this was the time to do it and their speed of thought and deed was making inroads into the visiting defence. Rosslyn Park RFC were forced to concede penalties and with 20 minutes to go, fly half Grant CONNON sliced through a stern defence for an individual score (12 – 24).

Although DMPRFC tried similar tactics for the rest of the game, Rosslyn Park RFC professionally slowed down the game and there was no further scoring.