North One East: Driffield 36 Cleckheaton 38

A THRILLER in the East Yorkshire Wolds was won with a last-gasp, injury-time try by Cleckheaton.

Skipper Matt Piper's try, together with a steely conversion from man of the match Mike Swetman broke the hearts of a plucky Driffield team.

In a game of 74 points, the lead toed and froed throughout, but Cleckheaton showed a self belief, which is rapidly becoming a feature of this season as they responded with plenty of purpose to a Driffield try on the 75th minute.

Leading up to the game, coach Thiu Barnard had to ring the changes following a number of injuries during the win over Bridlington.

Mikey Hayward, Alex Garden and Lewis Beasty all had knocks and were unable to play and, to add to the woes, James Crowther was unavailable too.

Tom Austin, Niall Jackson, Craig Blackburn and debutant Josh Clough were brought in to replace them.

Cleckheaton started unusually brightly, and within five minutes were awarded a penalty in a central location inside Driffield’s 22.

Jack Seddon, realising the defensive line were all offside, quickly tapped the ball to himself, and by the time the home side could react, he was over the whitewash.

Swetman kicked the conversion to give Cleckheaton an early lead, but Driffield levelled the scores ten minutes later when Cleckheaton lost a scrum against the head and Craig Gray went over.

Ben Thrower was then sin-binned for a repeat offence and Driffield used their extra man advantage to go into a seven-point lead.

Swetman reduced the deficit to 14-10 with a well-struck penalty goal, and Cleckheaton were attacking the Driff line but turned the ball over, and the Woldsmen’s winger Ben Dinsdale collected a short pass on the blind-side and raced up the touchline, catching Cleckheaton’s full back flat-footed for a well-taken long-range try.

As the game swung into injury time, a high tackle from the home team led to them being reduced to 14 men, and the ball was propelled wide by scrum half James Wilson, eventually ending up out on the wing with Brad Marsden, who forced his way over in the corner.

Swetman, immaculate with the boot all day, once again obliged to leaqve the visitors 19-17 adrift at half-time.

Cleckheaton scored a champagne try with minutes of the restart, with  Seddon picking up from the back of a ruck and chipping the ball a few feet over the defence before catching it after one perfect bounce and racing in under the sticks to give Cleckheaton the lead.

The same player, who was Driffield’s choice for Cleck’s man of the match, started the next score when he broke from within his 22 before off-loading to Swetman, who sucked in the defence around the halfway line and then off-loaded to the ever-supporting Ronan Evans, with the fly half getting a long range score.

Cleck were now well in control at 31-19. but Driffield scored a try to get back in it and then got another to level the match.

A spilled ball led to Driffield’s sixht try of the day to make it 36-31 with two minutes left, but Cleckheaton still believed, and when Driffield conceded a penalty on halfway with just seconds left, Swetman put the ball in touch just a few metres from Driffield’s line.

After a great set-piece and drive by the entire pack, Matt Piper found a narrow gap up the blindside touchline before running infield to make the conversion a little easier, with Driffield losing in heart-breaking fashion for the second straight week.