A lot of effort for no real return

After not playing for four weeks due to weather-related postponements and the World Cup Final, Moor resumed their league programme on Saturday with a game against Oldham at Green Lane. They also welcomed back skipper Danny Child for his first game of the season, following a long lay-off due to injury, and were also able to field the same set of forwards as had played in their last game – another first for this campaign.

The visitors kicked off and soon turned the ball over, forcing Moor onto the back-foot and within five minutes had opened the scoring with a converted try, courtesy of a missed tackle in midfield by the home side.

As it turned out, this score was to prove crucial at the final whistle. To Moor’s credit, they immediately came straight back and kept the opposition under pressure for the next twenty minutes, during which time they forced Oldham into conceding numerous penalties and were rewarded with a couple of penalty goals, both kicked by Child, and had an opposition player sin-binned. Using this advantage, Moor kept their visitors pinned down within the latter’s 22 for some time, but resolute defence by Oldham and a noticeable lack of physical cohesion and guile by Moor, prevented them from crossing the try line.

When returned to a full compliment of players, the opposition were able to break out of their half and were eventually rewarded with a penalty goal of their own to stretch the lead. From the restart, Oldham attacked down their left flank and following interchanges between forwards and backs, managed to squeeze in for an unconverted try in the corner. The final moments of the half again found Moor camped deep in their visitor’s territory and further indiscipline from Oldham resulted in three consecutive penalties for the home side; two of which they chose to take as scrums but made no headway, and the final one was kicked to touch, but the resultant line-out was lost, making the interval score 6-15 to the opposition.

Child reduced the deficit shortly after the restart with another penalty kick, but in an almost identical scenario to that of the first half, the visitors scored following the kick-off. This came from a line-out some 30 metres from the try line, after a relieving kick to touch by Moor, which was won by Oldham, who then set up a rolling maul and drove their opposition back to score a try, followed by a conversion. The rest of the half was featured by continued indiscipline from Oldham and resulted in back-to-back yellow cards, meaning that they played for most of the second period a man down.

Despite this benefit, Moor were still unable to break through the opposition defence and Oldham even had the opportunity to stretch their lead with a straightforward penalty kick, but this was somehow inexplicably missed. The home side had to wait until injury time before finally gaining some reward, when yet another penalty was kicked to touch and the resultant line-out was won and passed along their back line to right-winger David Adebo who, with still a lot to do, managed to worm his way over for a try, which was excellently converted by Child. This turned out to be the last play of the game and a 22-16 victory for the visitors, but with this crucial last conversion, it meant that Moor at least picked up a losing bonus-point, but were left with a feeling that they should have made more of the advantages that Oldham had provided them with through repeated indiscipline, having conceded over 30 penalties during the game.

Moor are away at Didsbury Toc H next week, k.o. 2:15 p.m.

David Todd