Mayfield inflict heaviest loss on Cumbrians
MAYFIELD ...................... 34 EGREMONT ...................... 4
MAYFIELD played hosts to Egremont on Saturday expecting a close game against a good side.
Egremont were a good team, no doubt, but Sam Butterworth’s side were just too strong for them and inflicted the visitors’ heaviest defeat of the season in front of another good Rochdale crowd.
Mayfield settled quickly and should have taken the lead after five minutes but Cole Connolly’s effort off a neat Lewis Butterworth pass was disallowed by the ref.
It took another ten minutes for the home side to register their first try after a typical Mayfield passage of play.
The ball went from side to side through six pairs of hands before James Duffy went over in the corner, the conversion was missed, 4-0.
They looked like scoring again after 20 minutes when Jordan Parr ghosted through the narrowest of gaps to make 50m. Sam Wright carried the move on as he somehow managed to regather his own massive bomb before moving the ball to Dev Long, who couldn’t gather the pass and the chance went begging.
Egremont pushed forward and caught Mayfield napping to level the scores through their big second rower, Ellwood, 4-4.
Dave Mills and Zac Baker saw to it that the defence was tightened up, rallying their team mates. With Joe Taira in the bin Egremont could have taken the lead but for a superb tackle from Baker and Butterworth.
Despite being a man down Mayfield took hold of the game and never looked back.
They attacked the Egremont line at every opportunity with Sean Slater and Jordan Parr causing more than their share of problems for the visiting defence.
Slater and Long were linking up well and the team was benefitting from the quality ball from these two.
Fresh back from his stint in the bin, Taira tried a deft chip through, only for it to fortunately rebound of a defender back into his hands.
He put out a sharp pass to the supporting Reece Hamlett who was unstoppable as he went in by the sticks, Parr added the two, 10-4.
With only a few minutes til half time Mayfield were hunting for the score that would show their dominance.
That score came after a superb offload from Hamlett put Slater into space, he found Baker who in turn found Dakota Tolhurst and in the form that he’s in at the minute there was only going to be one outcome, try time, again the conversion was unsuccessful, 14-4.
With the whistle beckoning Egremont showed their never say die attitude and very nearly cut the gap and they would have but for the awareness of Ben Metcalfe.
The first twenty minutes of the second half saw both sides cancel each other out as Egremont had their best spell of the game cancelling out the powerful Mayfield forwards Taira, Baker and Metcalfe.
Until, that was, a brilliant passage of play saw three offloads from Long, Connolly and then Hamlett put Metcalfe through for the first score of the half and it was the score that killed off the Cumbrians, Parr added the two, 20-4.
Mayfield turned on the style for the last twenty and scored three great tries, a brace for Harry Sheridan and the try of the game from James Mcdaid, converted by Parr. The final score was 34-4.
The sponsors MOM was awarded to Max Riseman for a non-stop 80 minutes performance while the coaches went for Sam Wright, whose probing runs and creative play caused no end of problems for Egremont.