7:42pm Sunday 25th January 2009
By Nick Patterson
Caldy 41, Bradford & Bingley 10
Almost from the second-half kick-off yesterday, Caldy strung together an exhibition of rugby which shows why they head the National League Three North table, brushing aside a Bradford & Bingley side that dominated the first period.
While the Bees were again not helped by having two players sin-binned, they had no answer to the quicker speed of thought and deed evident from the home side, who upped the pace of the game immeasurably for the second 40.
The one-way traffic started with a score on 43 minutes from livewire scrum half John Broxson, who sniped in for an excellent score, and continued through to the 70th minute when Joshua Bates came up last after the home pack rumbled over the Bees' last line of defence.
For good measure, Gavin Roberts also added a five- pointer to his bagful of points with the boot on the hour after back-rower David Mercer had secured the four-try bonus point after 56 minutes.
While there can be no denying that Caldy were ultimately good value for their six-try victory, the game did appear to hinge on a bizarre event just before half-time when Bees back-row man Guy Ford got his marching orders.
The Bees eight won a scrum under the home posts and were inches from the line, marching in for what looked like a certain score.
As the scrum reached the home line, the Caldy pack completely disintegrated and one man flopped over the ball to prevent the score.
The ball bobbled loose and Ford returned the favour, flopping over the prone Caldy player to get his hands on the ball.
If the ball was short of the line, surely a penalty try?; if it was over, then Ford had scored.
The referee summoned Ford from the pile-up and showed him a yellow card for preventing the release of the ball - to the utter bemusement of both sets of spectators.
Up to that point, the visitors had enjoyed possibly 75 per cent of the territorial advantage and the lion's share of possession, but had been unable to turn pressure into points, save for a Steve Brimacombe penalty on 37 minutes.
Two five-metre line-outs were easily repelled by the Caldy pack, Brimacombe missed a relatively straightforward penalty, hitting a post with another; Matt Barrett and Liam Frost both got within metres of the try-line but were unable to make that final couple of strides beyond the defence for the score.
Conversely, Caldy had been in the Bees half three times and had scored 15 points, although both their scores came from Bees mistakes.
The first try came as the whole Bees side were statuesque as Brimacombe's kick came back off a post. Caldy recovered the ball and before any kind of defence could be reassembled, hooker Neil Dowridge scrambled the 65 metres to the visitors' line for the score.
The second came as a charged-down Brimacombe clearance gifted the home backs the ball 20 metres out.
The ball was quickly recycled to the right for Mark Turner to dive in at the right-hand post.
With the score looking almost certain to head over the half-century, the Bees did manage to stop the rot, and scored a nicely-worked consolation try with seven minutes remaining, through Liam Frost, who scorched over after taking a feed from Karl Smith, despite being down to 14 men as Aaron Enoka was in the cooler at the time.
Bradford & Bingley: 15, S Dixon,(Bartlett 45) 14,M Barrett,(Smith 57) 13 L Frost, 12 D Sanders, 11 M Kirkby; 10, S Brimacombe, 9, B Greaves; 1, R Raper, 2, J Whitfield,(Scott 63) 3, R Wilson, 4, S Burns,(Hughes 52) 5, A Enoka, 6, I Judson,(Cookson 63) 7, N Spence 8, G Ford.
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