Moor avenge loss with narrow win

THE visitors to Green Lane last Saturday were Northwich-based Winnington Park, a side that they had not played at home for some 31 years.

on that occasion, the visitors had one Dewi Morris playing for them!

Moor were keen to avenge the result of the fixture at the end of September, when Park won 12-3. As it turned out, the game and result was going to be just as close.

The visitors kicked off and for the first few minutes kept Moor contained in their half of the pitch. Eventually, the home side worked their way up the field and from a lineout, took play up to the opposition’s 5-metre line, where they were awarded a scrum. This was won, and the home side promptly pushed their opposite numbers back over the try-line, where No.8 Will Pacey, touched down to open the scoring.

Although the conversion was missed, this domination of the set-scrums by Moor was to become a feature of the match. In the next 10 minutes, Moor missed a penalty kick, whereas Park did open their account with a kick of their own. From then on, play tended to be confined to mid-field, as both sides cancelled each other out, with Moor just having the edge - the aforementioned domination of the scrums allowing their backs plenty of ball to test the visitor’s defence.

For the remainder of th half Moor were almost permanently in the opposition’s ‘22’ and should have increased their lead on a number of occasions, but solid defence by Park, the selection of wrong options and overeagerness left the half-time score 5-3 to the home side.

Park again had the best of the early exchanges after the restart and a switch of tactics found them kicking the ball downfield whenever they had possession in their own half, which meant that Moor had to keep working their way back up field and unable to build up any sort of momentum.

It wasn’t until well into the last quarter that Moor began to take the advantage and from a scrum, the opposition were penalised and scrum-half Mark Edwards kicked the resultant penalty to increase the lead. If this felt like Moor were about to take control of the match, they were to be sorely mistaken. A cleverly taken restart kick meant that the visitors kept possession, somewhat catching the home side off-guard, and a deft kick over the advancing Moor back line into the corner found their right-winger running on to touch the ball down just before it went dead. With the scores now level, a successful conversion, albeit difficult, would mean that Park would take the lead for the first time in the match, but fortunately for Moor, this was missed.

Despite this setback, Moor continued to press and from a turnover with just minutes left on the clock, the ball was passed rapidly down the line which found left-winger Perkins Joseph, making his first outing in two seasons, and he managed to cross for a try with defenders hanging on.

This score went unconverted and with only a minute left, Joseph was then sin-binned for a dangerous tackle, to set up a nail-biting finish. Deep into injury time, Park had one last flourish and Moor were again penalised by the referee for what he adjudged to be an obstruction and had other defenders not been on hand to stop the opposition player, could well have awarded a penalty try. In the event, he did not and blew his whistle for full-time at the next breakdown, as Moor ran out 13-8 winners.

Given the narrow advantage of both position and possession, brought about by the dominance in the set-scrums, and having never been behind on the scoreboard, Moor deserved the win, with the MOM award going to centre and stand-in captain, Chris OgdenSmith, for both his attacking and defensive work, especially in the first half.