NURL 1sts and 2nds suffered a rare double defeat at the hands of two spirited Northumbria sides. The unbeaten first team went into their varsity fixture brimming with confidence to play a Poly team who they knew would be extremely well drilled.
In a pulsating and hard hitting encounter, with players being continually smashed backwards, the Poly scored a shock upset under the faltering floodlights on a chilly Druid Park 4G surface.
An early try, surprisingly from top try scorer George Matthew saw the Owls take an early lead.
However, from the following kick off Northumbria began to take a hold on the game.
Uncharacteristic penalties given by the peanut headed referee led to Northumbria crashing over for a converted try and from there they kicked on to victory.
Greek god Andreas Methenitis worked tirelessly in midfield alongside partner in crime Harry Rigby, but this wasn’t enough for NURL to gain control in the game.
Dan Capaross ran his hardest eventually knocking himself out joining hooker Matt Woods in seeing stars and forgetting everything about the game.
This report will now break both their hearts in seeing we got beat and neither of them scored hat tricks.
With numerous players bowing out in their final Stan Calvert, the game could not be finished with a straight forward narrow defeat: the Owls’ big mouthed prop Conor Ellison took it upon himself to initiate a 26 man brawl.
In an attempt to make a ‘bad day at the office’ somewhat enjoyable, all participated in a good old fashioned biff.
Cards of all colours were dished out in the aftermath by the referee meaning the AU’s most beloved finished with just eleven men, with captain Griffiths seeing red.
Once again league champions and once again established as one of the top four teams in the country soon takes the edge off a day to forget. A semi-final against Leeds Met on Wednesday will see the boys in blue attempt to further enhance what has already been a fantastic season.
The 2nds put in a valiant effort against a very strong Poly outfit with NURL bad boy Frank Bagley leading from the front with a bruising display earning him man of the match. Edgy fresher Matt Fry also performed well, clinically finishing everything that came his way, apart from dropping it over the line, a moment to forget. An impressive display from Matty O’Neil defensively with centres Dan Shortman and John Portsmouth taking no backwards steps in attack led to NURL having some promising phases, but Northumbria proved too much for the death machine to handle. A third place finish in the league, a good cup run and Tommy Schoefield putting a big shot on in their final game, the 2s can look back at their season with a smile as wide as Conor Ellison’s waist.