Craven Herald Sport
Gallant Greens lift the spirits with rearguard victory
5:04pm Sunday 19th February 2012
Wharfedale 8, Rosslyn Park 7
This SSE National League One game yesterday produced an old-fashioned score to a very old-fashioned game.
A match of tumultuous defence and error-strewn attack in sodden gale-force conditions nevertheless produced an edge-of-the seat finish.
Wharfedale’s 3-0 interval lead, courtesy of a 28th- minute Tom Davidson penalty, was certainly hard-earned, despite the end-on gale in their favour, and achieved against continual pressure from a dominant Park side who monopolised possession.
But the Greens' heroic display of ferocious, unyielding tackling and do-or-die team spirit comfortably neutralised the confident ball-carrying of the Park play which, for all its robust physicality, was made to look no more than mechanically proficient.
The slim lead may have looked insufficient at the break, but more valiant blood-sweat-and-tears defence - this time against the elements - eventually wrested back a game Park seemed to have won with prop Laurence Ovens’ 68th-minute try, converted by Ross Laidlaw.
With their first threat to the line in over an hour, Wharfedale secured victory when Tom Barrett produced the one defence-splitting pass of the match to send full back Luke Gray over in the corner five minutes from the end.
This was a game in which, curiously given the conditions, kicking - either out of hand or in terms of penalties - played no part.
Fly half Laidlaw, the division’s leading kicker, had just the one shot at goal – a tribute to both the Greens’ immense discipline in rearguard defence and Paul Kelly’s judiciously restrained refereeing.
Both sides instead preferred to batter their way upfield, finding it easier to make a mark against the ball rather than with it. Even a first-half yellow card apiece failed to alter the balance, let alone produce a point or a try.
Wharfedale, making light of the early injury to the influential Aaron Myers, were crucially better at absorbing the Park play and sharper in attack at the end.
However, it took a further yellow card apiece (to Steve Graham for the Greens and Darryl Marfo for Park, both substitutes barely having set foot on the field) to break the deadlock and produce the tries.
Wharfedale will be justly proud of their thrilling one-for-all, bodies-on-the-line victory which warmed the hearts and lifted the spirits of their fans on a raw and sodden afternoon in the Dales.