Whitehaven beat Tarleton in basement clash

Whitehaven made the journey down the M6 for this bottom-of-the-table clash where both they and Tarleton were eager to take the points to get their season moving and it was Whitehaven who came out on top.

The Firsts again had a sprinkling of colts in their squad due to player unavailability but this still left Tarleton with pace in their back line.
 
The Second XV were also at home playing against Sale RUFC.
 
The Firsts started well and some penetrating running from both Aiden Miller and Matt Forest had Whitehaven on the back foot, a break through by Matt Forest was stopped with a high tackle and from the penalty Aiden Miller gave Tarleton a 3 point lead.
 
After 27 minutes, in a line-out just outside Whitehaven's 22 the ball was stolen by Tom Eckersley and as the ball went along the back line another penalty was awarded for Whitehaven being offside. Aiden Miller provided another 3 points and Tarleton were 6-0 ahead.
 
Whitehaven then applied some forwards pressure and their big players started making hard yards  and Tarleton were being penalised too many times for various infringements and Whitehaven slotted one of these to bring the score to 6-3.
 
Just before half time Whitehaven scored the first try of the match following another set of forwards phases and getting the ball out wide saw their winger go over in the corner. The conversion was good and at half time Whitehaven led 10-6.
 
From the re-start the Whitehaven stand off hacked through and as he chased the ball he fell over and was deemed to have been tripped and a  penalty was awarded and was  successfully converted and they led 13-6.
 
Tarleton then took the game to Whitehaven and using their excellent driving maul technique they clawed their way up the pitch. Whitehaven were penalised 4 times for illegal play and were warned not to collapse the maul, they did this again and Tarleton were awarded a penalty try. The conversion by Aiden Miller was good and the scores were tied at 13-13.
 
As last week though Tarleton were again pressurised in the last 20 minutes with Whithaven hitting the gain line with their big forwards time after time and Tarleton's tackle count was extremely high.

The amount of tackling that they had to do throughout the match took its toll and eventually something had to give and in this last period of play Whitehaven ran in a further 3 tries that were all converted giving them a 32-13 victory.
 
Tarleton have a long hard season ahead of them and they need to take points when they create good openings, there were several try scoring opportunities that went begging this week and they need to be taken in future.
 
Next week sees the Firsts away at Upper Eden and already they have lost players as the Skofic brothers are off to represent Slovenia in a brace of matches over the next two Saturdays against Serbia and then Denmark - we wish them well.