With Haughton depleted by half term absences, Coach Brown volunteered to even the match up; boosting the subs bench and kicking off the game with 13 players aside.

Haughton started strongly and secured a 3 point lead early on as DMP conceded a penalty in front of the posts. However, from the resulting kick off, a strong tackle from Stokell resulted in Haughton coughing up the ball. Bearpark and Macdonald secured the ruck and the back row of Myers, Nelson and Law drove the ball forward with Law going over for the score which Brown converted (3-7). Myers then added a second in a carbon copy move (3-12).

The game then became very scrappy with a plethora of handling errors from DMP inviting Haughton pressure, until a large hoof up field from Drought was pursued by the pack. A strong counter ruck from Wind, supported by Heywood, secured the ball and the forwards finally allowed the backs to take part! Rigby quickly sent the ball to Brown who lined his attackers up well and the ball was moved quickly down the line for Graham to go over in the corner (3-17).

A scrum on half way gave DMP further ball which was fed blind to Shepherd who made an impressive 40 metre charge. This time the supporting backs secured the ball for the forwards and it was Law who went over for his second (3-24).

Further tries from Myers and Drought, both of which were converted by the impressive Brown gave DMP a healthy lead at half time (3-38).

A chat between the ref and the coaches meant the second half started with 15 players aside with DMP supplying a couple of players to the Haughton side in a great show of sportsmanship from the lads who donned a different jersey.

With new teammates in tow, Haughton started the second half strongly and nearly added a try straight away; only a fantastic tackle by Pascoe preventing the score. However, Haughton had new impetus and soon dotted down under the posts (10-38).
Haughton now had the momentum and a series of penalties and ill discipline had DMP pinned back in their own half for a considerable period. The DMP line held firm though, but the lads will need to reflect that arguing with the ref and each other is only ever going to be counter productive!

Eventually normal service was resumed and Delaidriti added another score (10-43), and from the resulting restart, Myers ran the length of the field to swallow dive under the posts (10-50).

In the last moments, the Haughton fly half, touched down his own added kick and chase which was just rewards for a side that never gave up.

All in all, quite a scrappy and disjointed game which lacked flow at times due to all the changes but the lads got the job done to line up a big semi final with local rivals Darlington in a few weeks time.

Now that’s one not to be missed!