Brum kick lifeless Leicester to another defeat

5th Feb 2010

Men’s Rugby Union 2nds:

Birm­ing­ham

v

Leices­ter 1st

14 — 0

BIRMINGHAM’S rugby union 2nd XV ran out con­vinc­ing 14–0 win­ners over a lack­lus­tre Leices­ter 1st XV on Wednes­day after­noon at Metch­ley Park. In unfor­giv­ing con­di­tions and with the pitch cut­ting up hor­ri­bly even dur­ing the pre-match warm-up, the per­for­mance of the Birm­ing­ham side was impres­sive against a Leices­ter team strug­gling along­side them at the wrong end of the table.

From the start, Birmingham’s for­wards put pres­sure on their oppo­site num­bers, Har­ri­son and Jones in par­tic­u­lar dri­ving the Birm­ing­ham pack on. A good num­ber of early breaks from the backs almost cap­i­talised on this momen­tum, Delvin-Jones and Liton on sev­eral occa­sions motor­ing through a leaky Leices­ter defence.

How­ever, points were hard to come by for both  teams, with the ball often get­ting bogged down around the half way line and nei­ther side made many inroads into their oppo­nents twenty two.Nevertheless, as the half wore on, Birmingham’s for­wards con­trolled the line­out. This heaped pres­sure on the Leices­ter defence and they even­tu­ally buck­led, con­ced­ing two penal­ties, both of which were dis­patched con­fi­dently by Delvin-Jones, giv­ing Birm­ing­ham a 6–0 half-time lead.

Less than 10 min­utes after the restart, Delvin-Jones had extended Birmingham’s lead, kick­ing another penalty. The home sides scrum-half, Thomp­son, was par­tic­u­larly impres­sive, mar­shalling the for­wards effec­tively and forc­ing a series of errors from his oppo­site num­ber, which allowed Birm­ing­ham to retain much of the pos­ses­sion. With ten min­utes remain­ing a light­ning attack from the hosts put the Leices­ter defence on the back foot, forc­ing them to con­cede a penalty try.

From right in front of the posts Delvin-Jones could not con­vert, the only blem­ish on a superb per­for­mance, and whilst Leices­ter ended the game well, solid defend­ing enabled Birm­ing­ham to seal a 14–0 vic­tory. Leices­ter have now failed to score in 160 min­utes against the Birm­ing­ham 2nd XV, with the reverse fix­ture fin­ish­ing 24–0 to Birm­ing­ham ear­lier this season.

The home side’s per­for­mance was com­mend­able in tricky con­di­tions, the wind and rain mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to get much grip on the soft pitch. This win sets Birm­ing­ham up nicely for next week’s game against league lead­ers Harper Adams Uni­ver­sity, a good test for a side that has started brightly since the new year.