8th March  2008

 DARLINGTON 35  -  12 CLECKHEATON

Darlington had first use of the slope, the wind and the rain and immediately had Cleckheaton back pedaling  from the kick ?off.  The visitors just could not get their hands on the ball, a couple a missed tackles down the left hand wing and Andrew Pugh registered the first of his two tries.  Evan Haigh added the conversion with only 3 minutes of the game gone.

The home side were straight back down into the Cleck twenty two, their scrum?half threw an outrageous dummy close to a ruck and scooted through a strangely non ?existent defence to score near the posts and take Darlington into a 14 point lead .

Fortunately for Cleck they were able to re-group and make progress up the slope with a series of pick and drives ably lead by John Dudley and Lance Hamilton.

This was definitely not the conditions for spreading the ball about and both sides made a lot of handling errors when they tried to move the ball wide.  The result was that the game stayed mostly in centre field with the only further scores coming from two long range, wind assisted, penalties from Darlington?s Haigh.

That was until Cleck made the mistake of the game. They won good scrum ball on their own ten metre line, but, instead of running it in tight they tried an adventurous three-quarter move which involved the full?back in the line. Inevitably in the conditions, a pass went to ground and Pugh latched on to the loose ball to score wide out.  Haigh added the points from the touchline as the half time whistle went to take the Darlington lead to 27 points .

As the rain eased at the start of the second half but still with a strong wind at their backs Cleck took all of 11 minutes to get on the score sheet when a miscued Darlington clearance ballooned backwards and allowed the visitors to touch down for an unconverted try.

However Darlington had the bit between their teeth and their heavier pack began to give the Cleck eight a hard time, this ascendancy was further emphasised when the Cleck number eight was yellow carded for handling in a ruck. The result was that instead of the visitors camping in the home sides twenty two they were spending more time in their own, add to this their strange reluctance to use the wind and kick for field position meant that neither side looked like adding to the score sheet.

As the game meandered in to the final quarter it sprung into life when the Darlington loose?head prop, Dave Tunstead, showing a surprising turn of speed, charged deep into the Cleck half bouncing off some half ?hearted tackles on his way. Eventually he was stopped, the move then continued out to the left wing where Mr Tunstead arrived, on cue, to crash over in the corner.

With the game now well and truly out of their reach Cleck reacted well, eventually putting together a threequarter move which took them from their own half, with Martin Woodhead providing the scoring pass for Owen Edwards to dot the ball down in the corner and add the conversion, via the cross ?bar  in the 30^th minute.

Darlington?s Haigh completed the scoring with a penalty just before the final whistle to make the final result  a 35 -12 point victory as the home side continue their successful charge out of the relegation zone and Cleck start to be in danger of being dragged into it.