Difficult start to the season for Tarleton

Tarleton 7-31 Hawcoat Park

The opening games of the season saw the firsts at home to Hawcoat Park and the seconds away to Burnley. Both teams just about managed to get squads together with 19 senior players being unavailable due to weddings, cricket and work commitments.

The first team’s average age shot up from last season's with more than a sprinkling of ‘old heads’ being drafted in to make up the numbers.

Hawcoat Park looked lean and mean as they warmed up but from the kick off Tarleton gathered the ball and started to play really good phased rugby and Hawcoat just couldn’t get their hands on the ball.

When they did start to get some possession the Tarleton defensive line held firm and a mid-field stalemate ensued. However, it was from a quickly taken penalty in Tarletons’ 22 that found the defence not quite organised and Hawcoat moved the ball wide to open the scoring in the corner to establish a 5-0 lead.

For the rest of the first half neither side could take control of the game and both defences were putting in some great tackles, Hawcoat Park were playing the kick and chase game and Tarleton were keeping the ball up their shirt as much as possible and although they camped in the Hawcoat 22 for a 15-minute spell they couldn’t get over the whitewash.

Hawcoat put more points on the board just before the break when they won a line out in Tarletons 22 and threw the ball wide again and outstripped the covering defenders to score in the other corner and this try was converted to give them a 12-0 half-time lead.

Tarleton had to regroup at half time as they had lost Brian Parsons and Stan Stock to injury and from the restart Lee Waddell was injured in a clash of heads and he had to go off for emergency repairs.

Hawcoat now had an extra man advantage and at every opportunity they got the ball out wide knowing that they had a ready-made overlap. They nearly went in again but a tremendous interception by Matt Forrest saved the day.

Tarleton started to play some decent rugby and great breaks from Jack Skofic, Will Fell and Matt Forrest saw them starting to pose a threat. The Tarleton forwards again capitalising on this penetration into Hawcoats 22 almost drove the ball over but thie stand off got his hands on the ball and cleared up field. The ball was gathered by Tarletons’ captain Will Fell who rampaged through the Hawcoat defence from 40 yards out to score a great try. The conversion was good and the score stood at 12-7.

With 15 minutes left the game could have gone either way but further injuries meant that Tarleton could not cover the Hawcoat back line when they attacked and before the final whistle went they had run in a further three tries to earn a 31-7 victory.

Burnley 2nds 13-12 Tarleton 2nds

The seconds had led all the way at Burnley only to have a penalty awarded against them in front of the posts in the last minute of the game, this was converted and Burnley took the game and the points with a 13-12 victory.

Not the start that either team wanted but there were a lot of positives to take out of both games for next week and with a large number of this weeks absentees available to play next week we should be able to field full squads for both teams.