Friday night’s alright – if you don’t mind a fright

Under Headingley Carnegie’s lights, Yorkshire Carnegie carved out a win against a determined Jersey Reds side but not without a few howlers and spooky moments along the way.

First of all apologies for not providing my usual warts and all account – we realised we had no reviewer after the match kicked off. No apologies for my Halloween puns!

Jersey were up for this match and battled for every minute, taking the lead with an early try by slicing through the defence like a hot knife through butter. Within minutes, from a different style of kick-off, our backs moved the ball from side to side and Forsyth went over to open Yorkshire Carnegie’s account. Ford added the difficult conversion. 7-5.

Jersey hit back with a successful penalty before Stegman ended an exciting run of play by scoring an unconverted try. 12-8.

The dark arts of the scrum were starting to play their part and Yorkshire Carnegie were awarded a penalty for some goriness by Jersey and kicked to the corner. From the resulting play, Stedman broke free and charged over the line. With the try converted and a simple, successful penalty it was 22-8 as Boyce took an early break after all the props had a talking too and a finger waving at from Sir for their creepy scrummaging. Jersey took advantage of the extra man (to be honest more than one man – they are a massive side) and scored a quick try that was converted. 22-15 at half time.

Yorkshire Carnegie were awarded a penalty that Ford opted to kick to extend their lead. There was a long spell of pressure from Jersey which found the home side’s defence difficult to breach - not without some collateral damage as Schofield went off with a damaged shoulder and O’Donnell (the crowd were screaming for the league’s top try scorer to add to his account) was attended to a few times. Eventually Jersey scored and converted.

Yorkshire Carnegie had a chance to take a bigger lead but suffered the first of two howlers of losing possession from kicks to the corner after being awarded penalties. Cusack thundered onto the pitch and immediately got stuck in the play that led to Forsyth scoring his second, and Yorkshire Carnegie’s fourth, try of the night. Ford missed the conversion. 30-22.

Yorkshire Carnegie stepped up a gear and had plenty of attacking opportunities that mostly ended with mishandlings, Jersey upsetting the play or some strange decision making from the ref. Eventually, it all paid off with Ford ending an long spell of the backs looking for a gap in the Jersey defence. He missed the conversion.

Jersey would not give up, scoring a converted try from some good forward work. 35-29 and I was getting a bit spooked about whether we could hold on or not.

Something magical happened – the North Stand started chanting “Yorkshire, Yorkshire.” It came round to the Dark Side like a Mexican wave of sound. It put shivers up and down my spine and you could see it motivated the players. Heads up, shoulders back they put in more effort and got a penalty then a second following the line out. There was only seconds left so Ford kicked for the points – and missed.

A few observations

• Overall it was a thrilling game with some very fast ball handling across all fifteen Yorkshire Carnegie players.
• It’s sort of exciting to see our defence but it’s a bit harum-scarum and is not as solid as we’ve seen before.
• When we will sort out the one score for us, one score for you attitude?
• The one ‘mix it up kick off’ worked wonders – why don’t we see more of this?
• Ford kept doing grubber kicks that didn’t work and refused to change tactic.
• Buzz at 6 and Stedman at #8 is a good combination. It takes the pressure off Buzz who can then play much more subtly and sublimely while Stedman does the crash, bang, wallop stuff.

My cauldron of witch’s brew goes to Andy Forsyth for his two tries, lovely ball handling and a decent tackle or two.

I am off to find my inner (London) Scottish to hope they have a home win tomorrow so Yorkshire Carnegie can go to Reading top of the table.