West End 26 - 5 Blyth
After the defeat a few weeks ago to Morpeth, West End faced Blyth II at home in the plate semi-final.
A lively first 5 minutes started with the forwards dominating the game from the kick off with cracking scrums and lineouts getting up to the line close. A break came with Chris Hosking taking the ball and popping it off to Ewan who ran round the winger and through the pack to get close to the line. He then found Hosking again and offloaded to him where he passed it to Craig Allmond who ran in for the try, a great team effort in the first few minutes.
Some consistent penalties from Blyth meant West End then pushed again close to the line where they won a lineout 5 metres out. An excellent choice of lineout call mean that Jacob Foy played it off the top to John McGrann who, whilst wearing some lovely new boots, ran in the blindside for a try but the referee adjudicated it to be held up. Chris Hosking once again seemed to in trouble with a Blyth forward. Some early handbags were exchanged with West End keeping discipline well and not succumbing to the temptation of dishing out some on field vigilante retribution.
The home side’s strategy of whipping the ball out to the backs worked well with opportunities coming from forwards joining in with attacking play and tying in the Blyth centres.
Blyth broke the line and found Joe Rowan and Ewan Pritchard where Joe Rowan held up the Blyth man but the referee said it was a try. This gave Joe Rowan the opportunity to show off one of his world class hissy fits and kicked the ball away like a goalkeeper in anger. Very funny to watch but on another day a card could have been shown.
After withstanding some pressure from Blyth, West End got another try in 20 minutes when Jacob Foy popped the ball off for Ewan Pritchard where he ran in for his 9th try of the season, his first for a few weeks.
A good period of purist rugby followed with a lack of discipline at breakdowns on both sides. Blyth then were turning the ball over but were running straight into the big lads not a good idea. With West End in possession, a gap opened up for Jordi O'Neill to go prancing through the field like a gazelle with a broken sat nav and getting close to the line doing so.
The second half came and West End came out even more fired up, well 14 players did as Ewan Pritchard knotted one of the laces on his lovely fluorescent boots.
West End got sloppy and gave Blyth an upper edge for a period but the home side’s defence showed grit to turn the ball over and attack again with forwards like Venters and McGrann hammering the Blyth team with ball in hand. The backs then got the ball and Craig Allmond added another to his tally when faking the pass out wide and cut straight through the middle of the defenders to score again. West End then got many more opportunities to score at lineouts but with Blyth’s men pulling the jumper in the air it made it hard for West End to capitalise.
West End then were edging close to the final with 13 minutes to play when a misplaced kick in West End’s own half gave Ewan Pritchard the chance to take it again. No longer content with just looking like a footballer, he used his feet to kick the ball past a number of Blyth defenders where he then picked it up and scored an amazing try to seal the deal for West End and putting him in double figures this season at 10.
West End then played the game out and the whistle went. A credit to Blyth who never gave an inch during the match. West End advance through to the first final of the club’s history at Gosforth RFC on the 8th April.
Tries: C Allmond (2), E Pritchard (2)
Conv: McHugh (3)
