Bradford & Bingley 10 - 12 Sheffield

Bradford & Bingley RUFC 10 - 12 Sheffield RUFC

Starting Line Up - 7th February 2015

15. Andy Hodgson
14. Rupert Broadley
13. Joe Cribley
12. Leigh Sanders
11. Ali Womack
10. Jimmy Pearson (Capt)
9. Josh Bird

1. Tommy Marples
2. Sam Whitworth
3. Tony Stringwell
4. Dom Parsons
5. Ryan Seabright
6. Dave Bradford
7. Alex Fawdry
8. Jonny France

Replacements
16. Dan Rylance
17. Ben Whitney
18. Ben Parker

Sheffield trip to Bingley followed the narrow win away to Alnwick and a free week due to the Wheatley Hills match being postponed because of the weather. Rupert Broadley and Joe Cribley both returned to the squad after injury and Ben Parker remained on the bench with Josh Bird keeping his place at scrum half, otherwise there were no changes.

Sheffield's recent form has not been to the level attained before the Xmas and this game was once again likely to prove to be an enormous banana skin. The early period saw Leigh Sanders miss 2 penalty attempts which normally he would have converted and number 8 Jonny France had an early chalked off by referee Adam Carter before blindside flanker Dave Bradford managed to force his way over on 16 minutes after Bees had given away a penalty and Sheffield had declined the opportunity of 3 points. Leigh Sanders converted and Sheffield had an important 7 point to nil lead. Sheffield were however, unable to get any real momentum and the score remained unchanged until the 30th minute when Bees were awarded a penalty following a high tackle. Bees converted the opportunity through scrum half Richard Scull and reduced the lead to 7 points to 3. A number of opportunities came and went for Sheffield but the precision need to convert them to a score was lacking.

Bees inside centre, Shaun Dixon was shown a yellow card just before the break, but the advantage led to nothing positive in the way of scores for Sheffield until the 63rd minute when left wing Ali Womack broke clear and showed a very clean pair of heals to the Bees defence to score in the corner. The conversion went begging, but Sheffield's lead was out to 12 points to 3. Sheffield went immediately to sleep and were back in the game just 2 minutes later, with Si Hill crashing over under the posts and with Richard Scull adding the conversion, the lead was down to 2 points. Sheffield were enlivened and several good opportunities were created in the last 15 minutes, but the previous lack of precision and some dogged defence from the Bees saw them all come to nothing and the match petered out with Sheffield gaining a very narrow victory over their opponents at 12 points top 10.

Scoring:-