Old Bedians Share the Spoils in Eventual Thriller

Old Bedians took the field confident in their fixture against Manchester that their last start loss was a blip on their good start to the season. The early exchanges were positive with Bedians keeping the ball tight and making strong inroads over the gain line through heavy carriers Marcus Frew and Campbell Lomu in his first start at 12.

In the tight exchanges the Bedian defence was superb led by defensive leader Daniel Davis who had his best game in the 6 shirt ably supported by Paddy Rosser and Mike Tarling. The first scorers, however, were Manchester who took an intercept against the run of play to race away untouched under the post for a 7 nil lead.

Bedes were not to be distracted by this and went back to their basics. Throughout the half there were strong carries by O’Rouke, Frew, Knott, O’Shea and Kitching ably supported through hard charging centre pairing Campbell and CJ Johnson. Skipper Mike Gallagher was able to use this momentum to cross over for three first half tries that took Bedians out to a 19 – 7 lead whilst CJ Johnson and Loz Smith both went dangerously close to adding to this total with great efforts.

After half time Bedes went back to business but, despite half time pleas, couldn’t shut the door on penalties or costly turnovers from forced passes that would encourage Manchester back into the game. Lacking the clinical execution that was a feature earlier in the season, Bedes let Manchester back into the game with some careless and very basic handling errors and some poor decision making.

With 20 mins to go Bedes turned over the ball from another good attacking foray and the Manchester fullback, realising nobody was at home, quickly put the ball back over the top for a very soft try without much desperate back tracking; a worrying trend over the last few games. Rubbing injury into insult in this same play Bedes lost fullback Loz Smith to an ankle injury and flyhalf Mike Gallagher to a torn hamstring adding to the growing list in the casualty ward.

This season hasn’t been aided by availability and Bedes once again found themselves playing forwards on the wing to try and cover. Full credit to guys like Morgan Reidy, Lloyd Cawthorne and several other scrum halves/part timers who have been doing a sterling job playing a new position and doing it so well. Manchester were quick to capitalise on the inevitable defensive confusion to cross again and lock the scores up.

The last 10 mins had Bedians pressing the Manchester line for a try but resolute defence and a lack of thinking under pressure saw opportunity go begging, the game closing out to a rather frustrating draw. It’s onwards and upwards though with next week’s game against Lymm representing an opportunity to turn things around and, hopefully too, being the last week of 35 plus players disappearing to watch rugby across the country.