Captain Cranners Inspires a memorable win

Captain Cranners inspires a memorable win.

Leos met for the first time in 8 weeks thankful at last for some rugby.
While some of us tried to remember how to play we warmed up with some much needed contact.

Cadgey was fired up and let everyone know it.

Captain Cranners was also up for the contest and asked for maximum effort in rather fewer words.

The pattern of the game was established early by the Leos pack. Pick and drive was the order of the day on a slightly heavy pitch.
Cadgey, Poll and Andy Hill made hard early yards with Fishy also to the fore mopping up any loose ball, he made a difference in the tackle area putting is several well timed hits.

The forwards earnt their corn today and were quite superb throughout. The lineout was dominated by Tom Goff, who aided by messrs Cadgey and Poll, won nearly all our own ball and stole or disrupted much of the York ball.

Jamie Young made a few good breaks at 9 as did James Barnett at 10 but The York backs were up very quickly bending the off side rule to cut down what little time Leos had.

It was clear that up front Leos had the edge, in the backs York were quicker and well organised but such was the effort of the home pack that thankfully they saw precious little quick ball.

Cranners was leading by example, bravely paying hooker, and he was everywhere tackling, supporting and generally having a very strong game.
Leos scored all their tries by dint of forward drives. Cranners got 2, Hill 1 after several trademark runs. Macklin also dived over and Gareth powered over to give us a 5 try haul.

The minor miracle, in this post Christmas season, was some divine intervention which assisted an overweight centre to kick 3 out of 5 conversions, 2 quite hard.

Memorable moments were a 23 yard ( distance courtesy of Cadgey, how precise ! ) rolling maul that was a joy to watch and York had no answer to.

Richie Edgar continually running kicks back and getting us back on the front foot.

James Barnett quite rightly telling some grumpy centre to “ shut up “ several times.

Jake Kapper bravely diving on any loose ball and keeping his forwards going as the game wore on.

However the day was won by the forwards who to a man worked their backsides off, Cadgey, Cranners, Macklin, Poll, Goff, Gareth, Hill and Fishy take a bow.

They as a pack win men of the match.

To be fair to York they score 2 good tries and dropped another over the line when the game was somewhat in the balance.

The game was played in reasonably good spirits with some amusing banter between both sets of backs.

This was by far our best effort of a disrupted season and with a few more regulars set to return let us hope it is the start of something special.

Final score

Leos 31 York 12