Brum fail to hold on to Gloucestershire

4th Dec 2009

Men’s Super 8s:

Birm­ing­ham

v

Glouces­ter­shire

0 — 36

THE University’s 1st XIII rugby league team slumped to a 36–0 defeat against a Glouces­ter­shire 1st XIII who dom­i­nated through­out Wednes­day evening’s Super 8 encounter. The loss means that Birm­ing­ham has reg­is­tered just one win from seven in this season’s BUCS campaign.

On a Bourn­brook pitch which, pre­vi­ously, had exclu­sively hosted rugby union and Amer­i­can foot­ball fix­tures, the home side failed to gain any sort of foothold in a match which they were always chas­ing. The out­stand­ing per­for­mance of the night was that of Glouces­ter­shire stand-off Dan Poul­ton whose kick­ing mas­ter­class and ener­getic run­ning saw him amass 18 of his side’s points.

Birm­ing­ham had started the game doggedly, peg­ging the away team back into their own half. Right wing Matt Infante was the most threat­en­ing weapon in their artillery and, after just six min­utes, was unleashed down his flank before being even­tu­ally bun­dled into touch. However, Glouces­ter­shire even­tu­ally started to show their class and creativity. Scrum-half Rory Trow, posi­tioned directly in front of the posts, kicked a sim­ple drop-goal to give his team a 1–0 lead.

The away team con­tin­ued to press, cen­tre Andy Web­ster and the elec­tric wing Patrick Evans com­bin­ing well down the left-hand side, but were stopped in their tracks on numer­ous occa­sions by a res­olute Birm­ing­ham defence. Inevitably, the Glouces­ter­shire break­through did come. Hooker Rob Web­ber was tack­led just a metre from the home team’s try-line but, quickly retriev­ing the loose ball, even­tu­ally scored in the cor­ner. Kick­ing from the touch­line, Poul­ton con­verted his first two points of the evening’s pro­ceed­ings with aplomb.

Birm­ing­ham, how­ever, did not cave in and bat­tled well in mid­field. Infante broke loose from a tackle but came up short of the try line. Then, after some fluid phase play, cen­tre Rho­dri Kent thought he had touched-down. Unfortunately, the ref­eree adjudged that there had been a dou­ble move­ment and the home team were denied the oppor­tu­nity to estab­lish them­selves in the match.

Shortly before half-time, Glouces­ter­shire con­sol­i­dated their lead. Fol­low­ing a fum­bled ball and a toe-poke towards the cor­ner, full back Harry Boughton pow­ered over the line despite a brave last-gasp tackle from his oppo­site num­ber Scott Ben­nett. The try was awarded despite unfounded Birm­ing­ham protests and Poul­ton con­verted to give the vis­i­tors a 13–0 lead at the interval.

Despite start­ing the sec­ond half with intent, Birm­ing­ham even­tu­ally col­lapsed. With just three min­utes of the half gone, their best chance of the game was squan­dered after a dropped ball. Too often, their back­line drifted across the pitch rather than cut­ting straighter and more effec­tive angles in attack. Moments later, Poul­ton broke through to score and his sub­se­quent oppor­tu­nity for another two points was confidently taken.

The vis­i­tors’ fourth try of the match was calmly touched-down, once again, by their inspi­ra­tional stand-off. After a fine break, Trow sen­si­bly offloaded as, off bal­ance, he stum­bled towards the try-line and Poul­ton, the only sup­port run­ner, fin­ished off the move and ended Birmingham’s hopes of a poten­tial come­back. As Big Joe chimed, Poul­ton slot­ted his con­ver­sion through the posts.

The final two tries were claimed by Evans, whose wil­ful run­ning was a con­stant thorn in Birmingham’s side. The first saw him break loose of Andy Stim­son and Greg Stew­art before show­ing a fan­tas­tic sleight of foot to fin­ish in the cor­ner. For the second, he scram­bled over the try-line after Web­ster had bro­ken through the home team’s now fatigued defence. Sand­wiched between the tries, Trow sent the ball over the posts for his sec­ond drop-goal.

The game ended scrap­pily and Birm­ing­ham man­aged to gain some ter­ri­tory as com­pla­cency crept in to the vis­i­tors’ game. How­ever, the referee’s final whis­tle sig­nalled a Glouces­ter­shire vic­tory which ensured that they recorded the dou­ble over their West Mid­lands rivals, hav­ing won a com­fort­able open­ing game of the season, on home turf, 46–0.

Glouces­ter head coach, Ken Stone, was under­stand­ably thrilled with his team: ‘It was a strong over­all per­for­mance. After a fairly even open­ing 20 min­utes, we really took con­trol of the game. We now need to push on from here in order to have a suc­cess­ful sec­ond half to the campaign.’

Birm­ing­ham will be dis­ap­pointed with their per­for­mance. Out­classed and out­played, it will be dif­fi­cult to pick them­selves up from this demor­al­is­ing defeat for next week’s Super 8 encounter away at Lough­bor­ough Uni­ver­sity. An indi­vid­ual per­for­mance to the tune of Poulton’s would go a long way to improv­ing their chances of victory.