Selby Shine in The Sun At Doncaster.

On a sunny day in Donny (a rare event in its self) Selby U13's took up the challenge of their first away match of the season.

A hard pitch with a short grass covering called invitingly to the Selby speed machines in the back row, whilst a large pack of Doncaster forwards indicated a hard days work for the “boys up front”.

Coach Steward must have got the warm up session right, because like the week before Selby started at pace.

The forwards competed extremely well at the breakdown, and were winning good clean ball for the backs. Distribution from the ruck was good and the backs were making good ground and it was not long before they had made an opening for the first try.

The first half continued in a similar manner with hard work from the forwards winning good ball and thus allowing the backs to show their pace and excellent team work.

Line outs were dominated by Selby with good work from the “Assassin Foster” and Raddings and the scrums where contested reasonably evenly.

Captain McCoy was extremely disruptive around the lose supported well by Steward at hooker, with the second rows Leighton and Cole strongly clearing out the big Doncaster forwards.

The hard ground took its first casualty when “Socket” was taken down by a scrag tackle and banged his head heavily. No real damage done but as usual player care was forefront in the mind of the coaches and he was replaced at 8 by Foster with Henry coming on as flanker.

The pace, threat from the backs caused gaps to open in the Doncaster defence and allowed Selby to run in four trys in the first half. The combination of Hunt, Genn, “Rock you Taylor” and Stoker was proving difficult for Doncaster to cope with. The solid start enabled Selby to introduce players from the bench mid way through the half.

The only disappointing aspect of the first half was a lack of concentration shown by Selby that allowed the Doncaster 8 to run in try when he should have been brought down long before the try line.

First Half Doncaster 7 Selby 20.

The second half saw all 22 players used with little change in performance levels, reinforcing the “Team Selby” ethos where the whole is greater than the individual.

Up front whether it was the changes in the pack or Doncaster were tiring a little in the heat the Selby pack started to dominate the scrum with Harrison at scrum half enjoying the arm chair ride his pack was providing him with.

Clayton coming on in the front row performed an excellent job on his opposite number and suddenly Selby were pushing Doncaster backwards and making gains of over 1.5mts.

Into this high temperature arena new team members Mcloughlin and Charlie were introduced and they slotted in well and showed good potential with some strong running and nice hands.

The Selby pack continued to win clean ball and from a ruck, Harrison made a break and passed to Taylor who accelerated to score his second try of the game.

The entrance into the game of new man “Locomotion Lewis” caused a stir, he soon got into the action driving powerfully forward, then making a nice pop pass to Douglas who made good ground up the left eventually being forced out for a Doncaster line out.

From this line out Selby won the ball and quickly spun it across the pitch where Stoker went over for his fourth try.

The excellent win was slightly spoilt as despite a great tackle by Leetham lack of concentration allowed Doncaster to go over in the last min for a converted Try to make the final score Doncaster 19 Selby 39.

Tries from,

Stoker (4)
Taylor (2)
Harrison (1)

Hunt made two good conversions and managed to hit the cross bar on two others from difficult attempts.

An improved performance on last weeks win against Hudderfield, all round by the “Green Machine” with all players showing, competition in all positions is once again going to be tough, with new additions showing plenty of promise... That said two wins out of two against good opposition is a good start.