Doncaster 26 Newbury 16
Spirited performance gains third home win in a row.
A very different Doncaster to the one seen these past three weeks turned up at Castle Park to deservedly beat their high flying fifth placed visitors with a spirited display of in your face rugby that restricted the Division’s leading scorers to a single try. The margin of victory should have been greater, though, and once again the bonus point eluded Pieter Muller’s men. Simon Grainger started after his injury absence, and Rob Liley was on the bench – the presence of both was significant.
The much vaunted expansive game of Newbury was immediately in evidence as they moved fast and wide in the early stages but they soon found that their hosts had a plan to negate this by committing heavily to the breakdown to deny quick ball and by rushing up a flat defence to close space. Under significant pressure, the Blues error and penalty count rose and Doncaster took a lead they would never relinquish. Hands in a ruck gave Jon Benson his first penalty after 10 mins before the large crowd were treated to a cleverly executed home try. Charlie Harrison and Benson got the ball away sharply off a midfield scrum, Brad Hunt broke the defence and made ground to send Donavan Van Vuuren up the left and he drew the last defender to put John Boden in for a wonderful score, to which Benson added with ease. Although the only other scoring in the half was two penalties apiece for Benson and Blair Feeney, there was considerable action at both ends of the field but with Doncaster the side looking more likely to score. Disappointingly, though, too many moves ended with a knock on or the half time margin would have been bigger. As the half came to a close the home side seemed to lose some focus and energy levels dropped, allowing Newbury to reassert themselves. Hunt was extremely lucky to stay on the field after a high tackle on ex Castle Park wing Richard Briggs (who made no other contribution to the game!) and the defence was called upon to tackle ferociously but it was right that the half ended with Doncaster back at the other end with Benson just missing three more points as his penalty drifted wide.
Whatever was said at the interval, Doncaster came back out firing again on all cylinders. Van Vuuren chipped, chased, recovered and stretched to within inches of a try in the opening minute but was isolated and penalised for not releasing ; and as the pressure mounted, desperate Newbury hands in a ruck presented Benson with another successful kick. Again on the attack, Harrison chipped ahead for Michael Wood to chase and as he used his feet to neatly chip the ball past his defender, he was cynically taken out close to the line. The presence of other defenders, and the leniency towards Hunt earlier, removed any thoughts the excellent referee, Gareth Copsey, and his TJ, had of either penalty try or yellow card; but justice was done as the kick to corner option produced the perfect line out catch and drive with prop Steve Barretto touching down for his first try for the club. Again Benson’s accurate boot added the extras from wide out as the hour approached. Creative Newbury should never be written off and it was no surprise to see them fight back and for the next 10 minutes send one attack after another into Doncaster territory. Eventually their reward came – after one catch and drive had been repelled, another saw Glen Cooper driven over and Feeney’s conversion reduced the gap to seven points. This Doncaster side were not to be outdone, though, and again lifted their game to spend much of the remaining time in the Blues half. Backs moves, forwards drives and even the up and under were tried but the only points came from one last Benson penalty as Newbury were offside and were denied a losing bonus point. The final play of the game saw Wood streaking away in the clear only to be called back for a marginal forward pass and Pieter Muller’s men will go to Rotherham next Saturday in much better heart and up for this first meeting of the two clubs in league rugby.
The 2nd XV top of the N2C table match up between the two clubs will now be played at Castle Park on Thursday evening at 7.30pm by popular request and is sure to attract a big crowd on the night.
Doncaster: Boden J, Van Vuuren, Hunt, Van Den Berg, Wood, Benson, Harrison, List, Boden S (Plevey 65), Tau (Barretto 50), Kenworthy, Cook D (Norris 52), Earnshaw, Grainger (Peacey 40), Montagu.
Newbury: Roberts, Briggs (Nutt 63), Ireland, Bell (Ilano 51), Bingham, Feeney, Smaje (Baxter 61), Faulkener, Scothern (Cooper 61), Carter (Jarvis 48), Smith, Radbourne (Hart 56), Styles, Cracknell, Lubans
Referee: G Copsey (RFU) |
