Union suffer a heavy defeat at home

Union suffer a heavy eleven to one try defeat at home and were under the cosh from the start of the game, using their powerful well drilled forwards to score with less than 5mins on the clock.

Union defences were under constant attack, despite some great tackling, as some great interplay between the visitors’ tight forwards resulted in their hooker scoring a converted try having found a hole in midfield a further unconverted try meat the visitors were 0-17 down before the end of the first quarter.

Just before half time Union struck back their powerful scrum providing a great platform for Craig Dunbar to pick up from the base and power over the line, Alex Sinclair adding the extras to narrow the visitors lead to 7-17.

Thurston weren’t finished and deep into injury time gained great field position through their forwards and as the Union defence creaked took a quick tap penalty 10m out and added a further unconverted try to take the half time score to 7-22.

The visitors were quickly on the scoreboard, their 10 jinking his way to the line from the kick off to score under the posts to take the lead to 7-29.
A combination of a tiring defence and trying to run the ball out of their own 22, which resulted in turnovers allowed Thurston to go on to score a further 6 unanswered try, the final score totalling 7-73.

In spite of the defeat there was some solid performances, in particular from inside centre Nick Trataris who was ever present in defence and attack as well as Whalebone man of the match Johnny Short who had a great game both in the tight and loose called up from the Firebirds as front row replacement at the last minute.

Union’s next game is at home to Wisbech next week, the team will be cheered on by the Firebirds who have a rest week and will be in attendance at a pre-match lunch.

Team: Chris Spenceley, Beb Bond-Webster, Simon Pitcher, Jordan Read, Lewi White (C), Jon Spicker, Matt McLaughLin, Craig Dunbar, Lloyd Davis, Luke Hill, Graham Hunt, Nick Trataris, Ryan Day, Tristan Smith, Alex Sinclair

Replacements: Johnny Short, Ben Gurling, David Sheldon-Smillie

Scorers: Craig Dunbar 1T, Alex Sinclair 1C