W/D in narrow defeat

Waysiders/Drumpellier suffered a narrow defeat to title-hopefuls Paisley.

The West Region Division Two side responded well to the challenge laid down after their last outing against Strathaven and gave Paisley a run for their money at Langloan.

Although the home side started better, they conceded a penalty 30m out when they were pinged for not rolling away after the tackle.

The Paisley 10 slotted the kick to give them an early lead after three minutes.

Straight from kick off W/D were on the scoreboard when Paisley were penalised for handling in the ruck.

Ruari Gartshore made no mistake with the kick.

The visitors had a great opportunity to go ahead again when they were awarded another penalty and went for the corner. W/D got up to spoil the line out and turned the ball over allowing them to clear for touch.

The heavy conditions underfoot and the slippery ball made this more of an attritional match than anyone would have liked and some slack handling and too many penalties affected the flow of the game. The conditions played their part in denying Jay Weir two scores when he lost his footing close to the line.

Five minutes before half-time, Gary Ferguson made a break from the 10m line and sliced his way through the defence to give W/D the lead.

In the second half, the visitors reduced the deficit when they again kicked a penalty.

In the 50th minute came the turning point in the match. Grant Salisbury made a great break from his 22 and was brought down just over half way.

As the ruck was breaking up, the Paisley prop had a look to see that the referee wasn’t looking then stamped on Salisbury’s chest. It was a cowardly action on a player who was still pinned on the ground. Unfortunately the referee hadn’t seen it so couldn’t take any action. He knew what had happened and spoke at length to the Paisley captain however.

This affected the W/D players a bit and they lost their focus for the next 10 minutes shipping two quick tries.

Just after the hour mark the home side responded with a well worked try involving both forwards and backs – before Gartshore converted.

The final 20 minutes were W/D pressing and then conceding silly penalties to allow Paisley to clear their lines.

Team manager Gerry Brankin said: “It was a much better performance from the team today and they were unlucky not to win, they certainly didn’t deserve to lose.

“This was a tough team but they were there for the taking. We lost our focus for five or 10 minutes and were punished for it

“Next week we have Uddingston away and I expect a better turnout at training this week than we had last week.

“I also do not want any last minute call offs like we had on Saturday. It completely disrupts how we want to play the game and means we are scrambling around for players two hours before kick-off.”