It was far from plain-sailing in the first half however. They went ahead with a simple penalty by scrum-half Paul Armstrong as early as the second minute when a fine break by centre David Buchan could easily have produced the first try. But Guisborough came at them strongly, defying the loss of two players to yellow cards at different times, and it was not until the last 5 minutes of the half that they pulled away with a couple of tries.

First winger Garry Izomor fielded a kick and made good ground up the middle before linking with flanker Chris Metcalfe and from the breakdown near the home line, prop Fraser Kirkley, on his return to the side, dived over in the corner.

Armstrong converted and 3 minutes later, the forwards turned a home ball over at a ruck and centre Craig Dominick broke tackles as he raced 50 metres to score under the posts. Again Armstrong converted and suddenly City’s lead had stretched to 17 – 0 at the interval.

From there, it quickly became unassailable as full-back Rob Smith took a short pass from Dominick to break and score at the posts, Armstrong converting, and then No.8 Peter Dent dummied his way over from a quickly-taken penalty 5 metres out.

At 0 – 29, there was no way back for Guisborough but there was no shortage of heart and fight on their part. Lock Michael Henderson dived over after a 5 metre penalty was driven for their first try after 61 minutes and, after Dent had added his second try from a driven lineout 4 minutes later which Armstrong converted , the home side came again in the last 5 minutes, stand-off Jack Robinson taking a short pass to burst through and score under the posts to give full-back Christian Pollock an easy conversion and reduce the arrears to 12 – 36.

Pollock himself added the home side’s third try from the last play of the game and converted, but not before City replacement hooker Tim Mackay had scored the try of the match, taking the ball in his own half in a crowd of players and swerving and shimmying his way through the lot of them before emerging and barrelling clear at remarkable pace to score under the posts, giving Armstrong a simple fifth conversion.

CITY : Rob Smith; Tom Elliott, Craig Dominick, David Buchan, Garry Izomor; Charlie Scott, Paul Armstrong {c); David Lyall, Mike Hay, Fraser Kirkley. Tom Baty, Josh Cotton, Dan Holden, Chris Metcalfe, Peter Dent.

Replacements : Tom Wilkinson, Tim Mackay, Howard Johnson.