Tarleton fall short against De La Salle

Tarleton faced in-form De La Salle at Carr Lane on Saturday and were dealt a massive blow when Sam Cleaver pulled a hamstring during the warm up and had to start with 17 players.

The first 15 minutes of the game saw each side testing for the other’s weakness and it was Tarleton who took early control in the scrums, pushing De La Salle all over the park. To counter this De La Salle kept the ball in hand and played fast flowing rugby which put Tarleton on the back foot.

The first score of the game was from a penalty when Tarleton were called offside at the breakdown and their kicker gave them a 3-0 lead.

Tarleton came straight back and from their penalty they kicked for the corner but the line-out throw was not straight - from the resulting scrum Tarleton turned the ball over and with some quick ball at three phases of play from Jonathan Mahon Hugo Castle broke through to score. The conversion was good and Tarleton led 7-3.

De La Salle then upped the pace of their game even more and two quick tries utilising their big runners and passing the ball out of the tackle came about with another penalty for offside this stretched the De La Salle lead to 20-7.

Tarleton still came back at the opposition who attempted to clear the pressure with a booming kick, this was collected in the Tarleton half by Will Fell who charged at the De La Salle defence breaking two tackles before slipping the ball inside to George Skofic who scored a good try. The conversion was slotted and with half time only two minutes away the score was 20-14.

Tarleton took their eye off the ball from the restart and De La Salle won possession from the re-start and ran in another fast paced try to leave the half-time score at 27-14,

Tarleton started the second half in the ascendency but despite being camped on the De La Salle line for 10 minutes they could not get the ball over the line. A messed up ruck saw De La Salle pinch possession and they ran the length of the field to score and took a 34-14 lead against the run of play.

Tarleton were pinged again for handling in the ruck and De La Salles lead increased to 37-14.

The last try of the game came from a rolling maul following a five-metre line-out and it was Liam Thompson of Tarleton who touched the ball down in the corner. This put the score at 37-19 and was the final points of the game.

This was a good performance by Tarleton but De La Salles’ style of rugby was proving difficult to defend against and Tarleton lost the ball in contact on far too many occasions.

The seconds had a resounding 69-0 win at Bury 2nds and this win keeps them mid-table.