Five-try win has Heagerty delighted

NATIONAL LEAGUE 1

MACCLESFIELD ran in five tries as they swept Fylde aside at the weekend.

The bonus point victory was the Blues’ first of the season as they look to establish themselves in National League One.

Fylde initially took the lead through a Scott Rawlings penalty, however the Blues hit back in the fifth minute after a driving maul saw skipper Ryan Parkinson cross for the Blues.

The score was then made 14-3 to the Blues after sustained pressure saw Ollie Parkinson score for the Blues, Matt Bradley added the extras for both try’s. The one-way traffic kept coming as Josh Redfern exploited a gap to score his maiden try for Macc on the 12th minute, taking the score to 21-3.

However, the visitors soon hit back with a try of their own, Scott Armstrong the scorer, Rawlings added the conversion on the 18th minute. Bradley added two penalties for the hosts making the score 27-10 at half time. The second of which saw Nick Gray go into the sin bin.

Macc continued to build after the break, and Matt King secured the bonus point for the Blues after a slick backs move, put him in under the posts. Bradley added another penalty, which also saw Fairbrother sent into the sin bin for the away team.

The Blues took full advantage of the extra man, as Ryan Parkinson bulldozed over from the back of a scrum for his second try of the afternoon. Macclesfield then started to fade as Fylde ran in two tries, both after line breaks through the Macclesfield defensive line.

The first came from Dorrington and the second was added by Bingham, making the final score 44-22.

Blues head coach Giles Heagerty was delighted with the display.

“I’m very pleased with our performance, we did a lot of things right,” he said.

“Before the game we said that we would get opportunities and we’d have to take them and to get a try scoring bonus point is pretty good.”

Heagerty also highlighted how important the bonus point would be in order to make Priory Park a fortress for the Blues

“We discussed this even before pre-season started, we want to make sure that nobody comes here and has an easy game. It’s got to be tough, and hopefully people will look at the table and the result today and say these boys are serious.”

Captain and two-try scorer, Ryan Parkinson was also singled out by Heagerty.

“I’ve known Ryan for a very long time, he’s a great player who’s doing a fantastic job as captain, leading from the front,” he said. “He knows how to get himself in great try scoring positions”

However, despite claiming a bonus point victory the performance was still not perfect.

“I’d rather the game finished 44-10. The last 15 minutes were tighter than I would have liked. Particularly with the number of injuries we started to pick up towards the end, Fylde also lifted the pace of the game towards the end, like they did in the final five of the first half, where we were just hanging on a bit.

“We put ourselves under pressure by falling off tackles but credit to the boys for winning a couple of penalties towards the end.”

Heagerty also shared his thoughts on this weekend’s trip to Coventry.

“They’re title contenders,” he said. “It’s a hell of a place to go, it’s a big stadium, it’s a great pitch to play on so the boys always enjoy going there. We’ll have a look at the preview, they had a good win last week at Loughborough, it’s National One so we’ve got to keep getting better at the things, we’ve got to improve and we’ll see what happens.”