Harborough 2nds dominate Coalville

The Black Cats second team took on Coalville at Northampton Road on Saturday with some older heads joining the normally young side. From the start the Harborough scrum was dominent although the Coalville number 8 did what he could to disrupt play. With the front row of Sharpie, Loveshack and the young Matt Rogers benefitting from the weight of Jake Ablett and James Wayman Coalville spent a long time going backwards. The back row was rampant and within a few minutes Will Hallam had crossed for the first score. Coalville slotted a penalty to reduce the arrears but Harborough remained on top. Unfortunately all too often passes went astray in the backs or the ball was knocked on, the fluency not helped by yet another new line up. Tom Mercer was certainly a livewire at 9 and new boy Carl Strickland showed that he has the skills to make a good 10. It was however the forwards who produced the points with James Wayman crossing twice from rolling mauls although credit must also go to the remaining forwards who pushed him over. (Matt Rogers told me that was the case) This gave Harborough a 17-3 half time lead although given their dominance and squandered chances it should have been much more. The introduction of some new faces in the second half showed that Harborough have strength in depth with Harry Merriman showing pace on the wing and Adam Blatchly producing an excellent cameo in his first game of the season. This included two tries from powerful and clevr running but best of all was his crunching “last man” tackle when Coalville thought they were through. From the loose ball Ablett was once again in support and picked up on his own 22 for what must have been at lest his 20th run. This time he rampaged through Coalville to their 22 before off-loading to Hallam who touched down to score. Coalville showed that they could also score tries and crossed 3 times themselves but a fine break by Strickland saw him carve through the defence to touch down and convert his own try to give the Black Cats 2’s a deserved 41-24 victory and 5 useful league points.