Saturday 29th September Kesteven 2nd xv 52-19 Paviors 3rdxv

Saturday saw Kesteven's second string begin their long awaited pennant league campaign with a home fixture against Paciors 3rds. Captain Dolan's team talk left the team in no doubt what was expected - a win!

And so it was that the dog pack set off on a good day for running rugby which well suited the selected side. They started strongly and were quick to score with Daz Blackley and Steve Smith finishing off some sweeping handling moves in the first 10 minutes. This set the tone for the first half where Kesteven seemed to be well on top, and only handling errors and poor decision making seemed to be their opposition. It took a little time for the second team to add to the scoreline with a peel off a maul from the returning Dougie Hayward leaving him with one defender to beat, and he seflessly passed the ball back inside to the supporting Mark Dent. Any Paviors side is a good experienced side, however, and through the skillful kicking of their fly half they manged to manouvre their way upfield and manufacture a good try following some poor tackling. Kesteven had the last word of the first half though as Joe Berry crossed the whitewash for the first of his 3 tries.

A number of changes were made at half time, and usually these take time to gel, however, right from the kick off, the dog pack started off where they had left off. Dent took the restart and set up play in midfield, where scrum half Simon Morgan picked out Jordan Hughes on the left. Hughes deftly chipped over the defence and ran through to gather his own kick and in one movement then passed back inside to the bulldozing Tyrone Miles who sprinted in from fully 35 metres out, for a quite outstanding score. Soon after Paviors found themselves on the attack and just as they were about to complete the scoring pass, Ian Charles managed to intercept and just had the speed to complete the score.
Kesteven were now rampant, however, with Paviors again threatening, Charles decided to try his luck twice but this time deliberatly knocked the ball forward and was dispatched to the sin bin. Paviors as expected took the opportunity to complete a second score. K's came straight back again and managed to put Simon Morgan away for a deserved try, and once back up to a full 15, further tries followed from Joe Berry, who was revelling in the open spaces, and a classic wingers try from youngster Olly Hughes who picked a perfect line through the defence to score.
There may well have been other tries and scoreres, but this reporter cannot remember any more....sorry!

All in all a fantastic bonus point victory to begin the league campaign, and the team should feel rightly pleased with their efforts. They know that theis was by no means the perfect performance, as all too easily Paviors manged to score 3 good tries. This will improve and the side will go from strength to stength.

The stand out performance has to go to Berry, who played with great maturity for his 3 tries. The forward provided a fantastic platform, with the evergreen Login, providing stability and it was fantastic to see Hayward back playing and managing a full 80 minutes, with Dent a livewire at number 8. Jordan Hughes was everywhere from the back row, and Simon Morgan linked the back line extremely well. Harry Martin is rounding into becoming an accomplished fly half, using the resources within his backline well.

Next week sees, the second string play a friendly away at Grimsby where they will be looking to build on this performace.

Team:

Dolan P, Login, King, Hayward, Miles, Dolan R, Hughes Jordan, Dent, Morgan, Martin H, Smith S, Price A, Berry, Windsor, Blackley Subs: Betts, Cunningham, Peabody, Charles, Bennett, Hughes O, John

enjoyable game, showed what we can do when we play with width. great effort from the whole team, great things to come!