The Greens Norton Road faithful turned out in force to watch this fierce local rivalry against the ON's under the floodlights on Friday night, and came away satisfied with both the performance and the result, although it didn't start well as Tows went 0 - 7 behind allowing a soft try from ON's second rower under the posts after a promising start, a period of Tows dominance followed, met by an organised and determined ON's defence, Tows eventually broke through from close range when back rower Jack Wilson went over for Tows, conversion missed to close the gap to two points.
Tows continued to control possession throughout the first half and laid siege to the ON's line but stout defence restricted Tows to just one more score, Gus Hopewell going over for Tows to lead 10 - 7 at the break, the second half continued much as most of the first with Tows retaining the ball for long periods, unable to move the scoreboard on, and the crowd wondering if all the hard work was going to be undone with a surprise ON's score, it was a great break from Callum Garwood, this week at full-back, who eased the nerves, he found a gap with a clever show and go and fed flying winger Sam Aitchison, who coolly stepped inside the covering full-back to score under the posts, Ben Roe adding the extras to extend the Tows lead to ten, ON's enjoyed their best spell of the game as they looked to get back into the match, but this time solid defence from Tows denied them a losing bonus point, young wing forward Tom Threlfall deservedly man of the match for Tows after an industrious performance.
After the game Tows coach Mark Yeates commented "Firstly we must thank everyone who turned up to watch us again on a Friday night, the atmosphere out there was great and we're delighted the lads delivered for the supporters tonight, it was probably our most complete performance so far this season, we controlled the game, our back row was immense all night and our half-backs got us on the front foot, it's hugely rewarding as a coach to watch the lads execute on what you worked on in the week, and always a little bit sweeter when it's against local rivals"
The win leaves Tows in joint second in the League, two points adrift of Paviors and level with Kettering, who have a game in hand and a single point in front of Oundle, who host the Tows in Saturdays league encounter.