A very tough day for the 3s

With 14 men (including Sam from Old Mods), Leos ventured north to Harrogate for what turned out to be a very difficult day at the office.

Within minutes the home team found themselves on the board, early ascendency in the scrum and lineout provided a decent platform to attack, and Leos found themselves looking up at the posts for the first of many times.

Leos were able to gather a bit of momentum, the backs managed to make decent yards and with ball in hand, the boys in blue looked pretty good, strong runs from centre partnership Chris Noon and Nick Faulkner asked questions of the pirates defence but the final pass could never stick, often resulting in a scrum or a lineout.

Leos camped in the opposition half for some time but left without any points, Harrogate fought back and ran in a handful of tries in quick succession to turn the screw. It wasn't until late in the first half that Leos could reestablish any kind of foothold; a few big boots down field from the constant penalties gave Leos decent ground and with a Harrogate lad volunteering his services, a big bosh upfield opened up space and dragged in enough defenders for Will Crawforth to twinkle toe his way down the blindside and just shy of the sticks to give the visitors some much needed points. Conversion missed

The second half was much of the same, the home team ran hard and managed to make the best of their chances, despite giving away back to back to back penalties Leos just couldn't find a way through, coming within centimetres on a couple of occasions.

An injury to Chris in the second half didn't help Leos and early reports suggest it wasn't a good one. Here's to a quick recovery!

With a few rotating Harrogate faces in the Leos colours the march upfield continued but never resulted in anything, even with the added incentive of 'if you score, you can kick' thrown into the mix. Despite numerous requests to call it time early, Leos had to pick themselves up and keep fighting. When the final whistle blew, relief rang round the pitch.

It wasn't necessarily a bad performance from Leos, the opposition were just better in key areas and made more with their chances. There were some good performances from the returning James Houseman and the evergreen Jason Blakey , a classic scrappy game courtesy of Matt Milner, who managed to put down a big marker dumping an opposition prop en route to the try line, gave Leos a few glimmers of hope. Adam Ketteringham also put in quite a shift in very difficult scrummaging conditions, barely putting a foot wrong.

Man of the match goes to Ritchie Elgar for solid defence and providing good platform with penalty kicks.

A big thank you to the Harrogate lads who boosted Leos ranks and made sure a competitive game could happen. They'll be a tough team for the rest of the league to cope with, by the time our return leg comes round hopefully a few more numbers and a bit less ring rust will make the score favour Leos a bit more. Some lessons learned, onto next week we go!