Carlisle’s late miss denies Welsh their comeback

YORKSHIRE Carnegie held on during a late London Welsh onslaught to avenge their British & Irish Cup final defeat at the end of last season.

The Exiles had a chance to win it in the last minute but for flyhalf Joe Carlisle missing the conversion before the away side grinded out the win.

Three tries from prop Rob O’Donnell, wing Seb Stegmann and full-back Jonah Holmes made it a hat-trick of wins so far this season for the Yorkshiremen to the delight of director of rugby Brian Redpath who said: “We gifted them 14 points at the start of the game which made it hard.

“But we showed real character with some harsh decisions against us. There is plenty to work on and not all of our performance was great but you win and lose together.”

The home side started well and within five minutes were two tries up as No. 8 Kieran Murphy and Heath Stevens dotted down to make it 14-0 after Carlisle’s covnversions.

Yorkshire’s response was almost immediate through O’Donnell and a catch and drive.

Barely two more minutes had been played before Holmes and captain Ryan Burrows linked up to send Stegmann over.

Welsh got two scrum penalties just before halftime and extended their lead with Carlisle kicking over the second.

Welsh full-back Chris Elder saw yellow for obstruction leading to Ford getting his first points of the game.

Then a scrum on Carnegie’s 22 led to the away side taking the lead as the back-line used their numerical advantage before Richard Beck offloaded to Holmes for the try.

The home side stayed at 14 men as wing Kristian Phillips saw yellow for a high tackle. Ford then added a further three points.

The last 15 minutes were all Welsh with Carnegie seeing Beck and Richard Mayhew sent to the bin for technical infringements.

Then Phillips went over with a minute left but Carlisle couldn’t convert to leave them a point adrift.

Welsh coach James Buckland said: “I can’t fault the effort over the 80 although we took our foot off after the two early tries.

“We had to adapt to the referee for the second game in a row and were on the wrong end of a lot of poor decisions.”