Sandal Warriors maintain unbeaten home record with impressive performance

Sandal Warriors remain unbeaten at home so far this season after they ran out 41-12 winners when they hosted Blaydon Red Kites.
Sandal Warriors look to attack from a scrum against Blaydon Red Kites.Sandal Warriors look to attack from a scrum against Blaydon Red Kites.
Sandal Warriors look to attack from a scrum against Blaydon Red Kites.

Play went back and forth initially with both sides defending their line well before Sandal opened the scoring when a pick and go from the base of a scrum saw Ella Dews go over for a well worked try that was converted by Vikki Megretton.

From the restart the ball was collected by Imy Coxon and passed out to Ella Greensmith, who broke through the wing defence, putting on the afterburners for her first try. Once again Megretton slotted the extras.

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Following some bruising encounters among the big forwards from both sides, play was stopped for an injury to a Blaydon player. It was restarted with a scrum to the visitors on the Sandal 10-metre line, but the home team applied pressure and turned the ball over, then with a break down the left by Ruth Clewer Banks, it looked like another try was about to be scored, but she was stopped short. The ball was popped out to the right where Marna van der Merwe was waiting to run in, but again the strong defensive effort from Blaydon stopped the forward progress.

Sandal did add to their lead when a pick and go from the base of a scrum by Ella Dews saw forward progress made and the was ball offloaded to Tahnee Holmes who then got the ball out to Megretton. Another well timed pass out to Clewer Banks saw her break through the defence and score on the left side to make it 19-0 at half-time.

Blaydon struck first after the break with an unconverted try, but the hosts quickly bounced back as the ball was passed out wide to van der Merwe who acrobatically dived over the line to dot the ball down in the right hand corner.

Turn over ball put Sandal back on the attack and Greensmith once again showed her devastating pace as she ran round the outside of the Blaydon defence for another try.

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A long kick off forced Sandal to play safe and clear from their five-metre line, with the ensuing Blaydon line-out not developing into any attacking play. Sandal kept up their great defensive work, turned over possession at the ruck and broke through the middle with Holly Waddington making great strides into Blaydon territory, passing to Courtney Evans who broke through on the right with final pass to Coxon who completed the sublime move by scoring under the posts. Megretton added the extras to make it 36-5.

From the restart, Blaydon applied pressure and with slick hands they crossed the gain line to go over for their second try, which was converted.

The restart from Sandal saw Blaydon pick up the ball in their 22, but following a couple of phases of play the hosts were awarded a penalty. A quick tap from Molly Palmer saw the ball passed out to Clewer Banks, who crossed the gain line and offloaded to Waddington, running in support, who went over to bag herself a try.

Megretton was unable to add the extras and that passage of play was the last in a tough encounter for both sets of players.

Coxon was named back of the match for Sandal, Leigh Powell was named forward of the match and Greensmith was chosen as the opposition player of the match.