Blast from the Past #15

In the fifteenth instalment of #BFTP we are turning the clock bock just three years, to a 'game-of-two-halves' display at home to Silsden. With Ste Suddards returning to the black and gold shirt this season it only seemed right that we did one where he stole the show...

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Silsden fall short of unlikely comeback
Report by Jonathon Ward

Match Date: 10th Nov 2012
Competition: Pennine League Division 3
Result: Odsal Sedbergh 24 Silsden 20

An error-strewn performance full of penalties and uncompleted sets almost gifted visiting Silsden an immense get out of jail free card.
When Barnie Bland exploited an overlap out wide and set up Jared Priestley for his brace early in the second half, Odsal were 24-0 to the good, but somehow ended up scraping to victory by the skin of our teeth.

The early exchanges were pretty much the same from both sides, although it became instantly obvious what Silsden's game plan was – one up rugby. Every single set seemed to be 6 drives straight from acting half, no pivots, no dummy runners, even the Sideshow Bob number 6 seemed to run the ball at the line more than he did pass. The first bit of excitement came in the 7th minute, when Sedge blew a glorious chance to open the scoring.

Flynny sent a little chip over the defensive line (his one and only good kick of the match) which Andy Gabriel chased and scooped up. With the winger in front and support on the inside Gabriel opted to try kick past the defender instead of give the inside ball, luckily the ball scruffily rebounded back to the three-quarter who then arced around the rest of the line and charged towards the sticks before sending a looping high pass out wide to DT, who just couldn't collect it and spilled it over the line.

Despite that madness Sedge did take the lead soon after when, to a huge roar from the crowd, Robert Booth scooted out from dummy half, stepped a marker and hit the supporting Ste Suddards on the inside for a quality try.

Just after the half hour mark the lead was extended, Suddards turning from try-scorer to provider, where he stepped one defender to create some space before sending a grubber into the bottom corner where Jared Priestley was on hand to touch down, Grez adding the touchline conversion or 12-0. Near the death of the half (or so we thought) in the 38th minute the ref sent two Silsden lads to the sin-bin at the same time. One for holding down and the other for gobbing off.

Sedbergh capitalised on this 2 man advantage when Boovey scuttled over from acting half to cap off a decent first half display from the hooker. The ref's watch must've been on a different time zone though, as he refused to blow up and ended up playing 47 minutes in EACH half. Robert Priestley was sent for ten minutes at the elongated end of the first, for reasons nobody quite knows.
The second half started fantastically with the fourth try putting us 24-0 up and in cruise control.

But then it all went drastically wrong. Barging down the slope the visitors grabbed two tries in three minutes to narrow the gap, 10 second half minutes gone and we'd already seen 16 points scored. Five minutes later another “Olly moment” gifted Silsden a penalty in our 20. From there the chunky number 13 crashed over for his second score of the day and at 24-14 the away side were truly galvanised.

Solid one-on-one defence on two separate occasions thwarted Silsden from closing the gap further, first when Gabes smashed their winger into touch, before slack defence in the middle required Sam Greenwood to step up at full back and act as the last line of defence to save Sedge's skin. Teeth really started the chatter when a spilled ball in the in-goal area from Jared allowed Silsden to level the try count 4-4 and closed the gap to that of a single try.

Thankfully Sedge saw out the extra-long half, one which ended with the ref brandishing yet another card – this time a red for one of the away lads, and we got the vital league points.

We'll have to be a lot more clinical next week when promotion rivals Woodhouse Warriors face the Odsal slope fresh from posting 80 points past Hoyland.

S.Greenwood, Jared Priestley, R.Priestley, A.Gabriel, D.Terry, S.Flynn, S.Suddards, D.Dove, R.Booth, L.Birkett, B.Bland, J.Briggs, G.Harrison Subs: J.Karnasauskas, J.Sharp, S.Smith, N.Chapman

Tries: Suddards, Jared Priestley(2), R.Booth
Goals: Flynn, Harrison(3)

HT: 18-0

A link to all the other BFTP can be found here

Updated 07:25 - 4 Sep 2019 by Jonathon Ward