Newark U17’s made the long trip to Leamington Spa to take on Coventry based Broadstreet in the National U17’s competition.

With Broadstreet lying third in their Warwickshire league it was always going to be a close encounter. This was not helped with one scrum half ineligible to play in the competition and the other on the bench through illness but up stepped Matty Boddy to fill the void and had an excellent game with great distribution from the set pieces and fearless in the tackle.

Newark started off well playing to their strengths, it was good to see Morgan Robinson back in the second row and with Harry Cotton they dominated the line-out and the scrum was driving the opposition off the ball. The Newark pressure forced a penalty on 8 ½ minutes and George Stewart put a lovely kick over to take the lead. Newark pressure continued and a typical forceful run from 15 meters out saw hooker Jay Harwood break through tackles and, with the rest of the forwards in support, force his way under the posts for a great try and an easy 2 points for George.

Towards the end of the first half shell shocked Broadstreet started to pull themselves together when they realised they were in a match and started using their strong running backs to make inroads into the Newark defence. All credit to Newark they weathered the storm well and not for the first time this season stout defence prevented some good point scoring opportunities.

Half Time 0 – 10.

In the second half Newark took their foot off the gas and allowed the opposition forwards back into the game which allowed their backs to put together some excellent attacks and on 46 minutes they came back with a try of their own close to the touchline but missed the conversion. The game settled with neither team able to take full control.

On 58 minutes a Broadstreet player was sin-binned for throwing a punch at a ruck (it didn’t connect) and again George stepped up to give us a further 3 points, two minutes later the ref sin-binned Jay Harwood for some sort of infringement at a penalty.

5 – 13 and the sides equal it was nail biting stuff from then on, the opposition backs again ran in a well worked try on 68 minutes and put over the conversion 12 – 13.

As the match entered its third minute of overtime time Broadstreet put a kick over for their winger to chase, the ball was gathered safely and with a typical gritty response the player tried to evade the chasing pack and run it back at them, he was isolated and penalised for holding on. I couldn’t look as their kicker put it wide, we could all breath again.

It was a great team performance and a deserved win, no matter how heart stopping.

A big thank you to all the parents that made the trip and the lads that made the journey but didn’t get on the field, your support was fantastic and much appreciated by the coaches.

The next round is scheduled for Sunday 14 March, venue and opposition unknown at the moment.