West End RFC

A hard lesson for West End today away to an experienced Ryton team.

A number of injuries, norovirus and a lack of available players meant it all started with a 14 on 14 with West End borrowing a prop forward allowing most of the forward pack being placed back into their rightful positions. Just after the whistle blew for kick off the precedent was set with Mike Marra receiving a face full of forearm from a Ryton centre. This was picked up by the referee and the player receiving a warning within the first seconds of the match

After that Ryton ran in for a very good try to put them ahead 7-0. Shortly after that West End had a large amount of time in Ryton’s 22 with some consistent infringing by the home team, which later on resulted in a very good try from Jamie shilling which puts him on 4 tries this season. Shortly after that West End let a fast running number 9 cut through the pack but Ewan Pritchard was quick to chase the man down and dive onto the player to stop a try. The play then got better with West End’s forward pack putting in a great shift in the lineouts and scrums to then play it out to the backs who played an offload game from there, unfortunately did not result in anything in terms of points.

A yellow card appeared when an already warned Ryton 12 tackled Marty McHugh with no arms quite late to get himself sent off for 10 minutes. West End worked hard to capitalise on this but some excellent work from Ryton’s back line resulted in a few more tries and some excellent conversions by their kicker. As the game went on the forwards got even better with big pushes in the scrums and great power in the lineouts to give the backs a bit of room to work with.

From there the game went down to 13 on 13 with injured players going off for both teams. which resulted in non-contested scrums. An amazing piece of audacity came from Chris Hoskins who ran around a ruck and collected the ball on behalf of the Ryton scrum half for probably the most obvious penalty of the season so far. Although this did light up the players faces and bring a smile to the game.

With only 17 minutes left to play West End pushed their hardest to get another try and have a good time playing on a sunny day. A quick penalty by Jamie Shilling and some good hands by John McGrann, and Ewan Pritchard played to their strengths and used good hands to get the ball along to Ewan for him to run in for a try which takes him up to 5 this season.

Although the try should have been placed under the posts, a finish in the corner gave Marty McHugh a hard kick to take. The last minutes of the game were tough which is what West End thrive on.

All in all, West End enjoyed the match and did reasonably well against a very good Ryton team. Plenty to useful experience from for some of our newer players.

Thanks must go out to Ryton for accomodating us on the 1st's pitch and showing excellent sportsmanship.

A very good game from Justin Elliot who filled in for a poorly Tony Kay (diddums) at scrum half and Mike Marra captaining well.

Final Score Ryton 53 West End 13  

Today’s team

1. Dean Henderson
2. Chris Hoskins
3. Michael Pritchard
4. John McGrann
6. Craig Allmond
7. Jamie Shilling
8. Mike Marra (c)
9. Justen Elliot
10. Marty McHugh
11. Ewan Pritchard
12. Ryan Nelson
13. Harvey Thompson
14. Scott Walker
15. Jamie Hutchinson

Tries: Shilling (1), Pritchard (1)

Pen: McHugh (1)