Archers end their losing run despite Scottish fightback
NOTTINGHAM survived a late London Scottish comeback attempt to hold onto a 31-28 victory and break their three-game losing streak in the Championship.
An excellent first-half performance by Nottingham saw them go into the break 24 points ahead but Scottish scored three unanswered tries in the second half to close the gap to only three points.
However, Nottingham did just enough to secure an important bonus point home win.
The game didn’t start well for Craig Hammond’s men as only five minutes were on the clock when the referee awarded Scottish a penalty try and sent Xavier Valentine to the sin bin for pulling down the maul.
But that woke the home side up and minutes later they won a penalty and kicked to the corner. A driving maul from the resulting line-out eventually saw Matt Arden take the ball and offload it to Jordan Olowofela, who finished in the corner, although the extras were missed.
Minutes after Valentine returned to the field, Ryan Olowofela burst through the defensive line and made a simple offload to Michael Stronge, who beat the last man for a converted try and the lead.
The Archers finished the first half with a flourish, putting three more tries on the scoreboard in the 10 minutes leading up to the break.
The first came when Iosefa Maloney Fiaola shrugged off a couple of tackles in the middle of the pitch. A couple of neat passes later, Ryan Olowofela found space to finish in the corner for a converted try.
Then David Williams broke through the defensive line and, with only one man to beat, he had a wealth of options as three or four Green and White shirts were with him.
He chose to quickly offload it to Stronge, who took it in for his second try of the half and Arden kicked the extras.
Finally, on the stroke of half-time, Valentine made up for his mistake in the first five minutes and pushed over the line for an unconverted try.
Scottish’s comeback attempt started almost immediately after the break, though, as Johnny Law found a gap in Nottingham’s try line defence to score a converted try.
Ten minutes later they closed the gap even more. Alec Lloyd Seed kicked a penalty into a dangerous position in the corner and then a perfectly executed driving maul from the line-out ended with Jack Musk pushing through to get the ball down for a converted try.
In a tense finish, Scottish, trailing by ten points, went through multiple phases but Nottingham’s try line defence remained unbelievably strong and they eventually forced a knock-on.
However, that wasn’t the last of the drama, as, with only a minute to go, Scottish put the pressure on again and got their fourth try of the night, Bryn Bradley breaking through the defensive line untouched to bring his side to within only three points after the extras were kicked.
It was too late, though, for the visitors as Nottingham make one last defensive stand to escape with the win.
Nottingham are back in action on March 23 when they travel to face Cambridge.