Saturday 17th. September 2016
North 1 West
Wilmslow 25 -31 Birkenhead Park
The lead changed hands three times in nearly ten minutes of time added on for a plethora of stoppages. When referee Nick Taylor finally brought proceedings to a close, Park had won by virtue of an 88th. minute try. There was still time for the Wolves to launch one last frantic assault on the Park line. They won a penalty in front of the posts fifteen yards out but it was to be the last play of the game so they had to elect for a scrum, which Park defended well and when play finally broke down that was it.
The Wolves players were devastated by the result even though Birkenhead Park are amongst the favourites for a quick return to National 3 North at the end of the season. They were always going to be a stern test and to have beaten them, the Wolves would have to have been just a bit more clinical in their play than they currently are.
Simon Mason, Park's No. 10, for example, made a complete lottery of the restart throughout the game by putting the ball high over the ten metre line, giving his pack every opportunity to get underneath it to steal the ball or at the very least to mess with the Wolves catcher. In comparison, Park had it easy when they had to face a restart. In the backs, Wilmslow players too often tried to offload when they would have been better going to ground. The offload can be a powerful tool in opening up space if you get it right but if you don't the ball will frequently go loose or be knocked on and then end up in your opponents' hands, giving them the opportunity to counter. The accuracy of your field kicking is also critical as it can be a very fine line between finding your touch and putting the ball in places which will hurt the opposition or giving them free ball to run back at you or worse still kicking it out on the full and conceding the throw and territory.
Against a decent side, like Park, these errors just hand them too many opportunities and you soon find yourself short of possession and having to play the game in the wrong part of the field. The Wolves have the potential to develop into a decent outfit if they can reduce these errors, even though they may lack the out and out fire power in the backs that they possessed last season. Coach Rick Jones said afterwards he was disappointed to lose a game that could have been won but not dismayed, adding that the side was just not yet sufficiently streetwise and that some of his players were still struggling to get to the required level of fitness to be able to fully concentrate on eighty minutes of intense rugby against the better sides.
Park might also complain that they were the victims of Mr. Taylor's interpretation of the breakdown, conceding eighteen penalties, most of them for breakdown offences. The Wolves suffered too but eleven penalties against them is about par. Twenty nine penalty awards though are significantly more than the number conceded in most games.
Park scored after just two minutes after an attempt by Wilmslow to offload in midfield went awry and they then grabbed an interception, slipped a couple of tackles and put hooker Stu Brown in under the posts. It was an inauspicious start for the Wolves and had Park and their supporters thinking that this was going to be an easy Saturday afternoon jaunt for them in pleasant late summer sunshine. For several more minutes, there was no reason for them to change their minds as the Wolves continued to be their own worst enemies. Bob MacCallum fortunately was on song with his goal kicking and landed a three pointer from the Park ten metre line before once again the Wolves discarded the ball and got themselves penalised for Mason to kick his second goal of the afternoon. Ten minutes played and 10-3 for Park.
There was now a big improvement in the Wolves play. Park looked like conceding a try to Cutts on the left wing, when their winger Sam Bryan stuck out an arm for what looked like a deliberate knock on. Referee Taylor was lenient in only awarding a penalty which MacCallum put away. The Wolves were now in the ascendency, although still making life difficult for themselves, until on twenty two minutes, they made the pressure pay by winning a scrum five metres out and after a couple of drives, putting prop Jordan Ayrey over in the corner.
Park made the restart difficult for the Wolves and after knock ons and turnovers by both sides, Park tried a quick tap penalty which the Wolves managed to defend at the cost of a third successful kick from Mason.
There was something of a purple period for Wilmslow now. Park's Bryan managed to get away with a second deliberate knock on for which he should really have been yellow carded. Three lineouts on the Park line failed to produce a score but then everything came together when forwards and backs combined for centre Richard Hughes to score after 38 minutes. The Wolves were 16-13 to the good at half time.
A missed penalty kick to touch enabled Park to counter early on. Wilmslow were penalised on the floor and Mason stepped up to tie things up again. Three minutes later yet another clearing penalty failed to find its mark, Park countered again with a sense of urgency and put left winger Adam Wellington in for their second try. The Wolves only had themselves to blame for finding themselves 21-16 adrift. MacCallum soon reduced the deficit with his third penalty and then when it looked as though Max Harvey on the left wing had been put away for a certain score, he was caught from behind and the Wolves knocked on at the breakdown with the line at their mercy. MacCallum now landed his fourth penalty, Mason followed with his fourth and MacCallum with his fifth, in a kind of ping pong game between the two kickers.
The seminal moment came when the Wolves were harshly penalised at the break down deep in the Park twenty two. There were four Wolves forwards challenging for the ball against a sole Park defender lying on the ground. Unsurprisingly, Harvey who had been first up got bowled over by his support and there being no opposition to face him was ruled to have gone over the top. Very very tough on him! But it opened up the way for Mason to bang the ball back into the Wilmslow half, to win the lineout and to create the final opportunity for Matt Walls to get the winning try.
It was a game that could have gone either way. One couldn't help feeling that the Wolves had had sufficient opportunities to have won it but Park had still scored three tries away from home and who's to say that they weren't worthy winners.
Photos: Full back Ben Day on the attack. Attacking lineout ball for Wilmslow.
Match report by David Pike.
