NORTHERN DIVISION – YORKSHIRE LEAGUE DIVISION 2
SELBY RUFC 10 – 6 YARNBURY (HORSFORTH) RFC

In atrocious conditions with incessant light rain falling throughout the match and the pitch at Sandhill Lane on the verge of being waterlogged, Selby managed to win a titanic struggle against 2nd placed Yarnbury by 10 points to 6 and peg their League advantage over Selby to only 1 point. With 2 games in hand on their opponents, promotion back to Yorkshire 1 would now appear to be in Selby’s hands. However, with difficult away fixtures at Doncaster Phoenix and Bradford Salem to come, nothing should be taken for granted.

With inspirational skipper Duncan Hardy unavailable, veteran prop Andrew Pocklington took over the captaincy for this crucial fixture.

In front of a bumper crowd on Selby RUFC’s Annual Sponsor’s Day, it was Yarnbury who did most of the early pressing with Selby very nearly conceding a try in the second minute of the match after a kick through the Selby defence was knocked on by the Yarnbury attack in the act of trying to scramble the ball over the line for the try. The resultant 5 metre scrum to Selby was won enabling Selby to clear their lines. However, Yarnbury did take the lead after 5 minutes when Selby were penalised for a scrum offence with fly half Stephen Riley kicking the penalty. Possession for Selby was hard to come by against the big aggressive Yarnbury forwards and with Yarnbury also making less handling errors than their hosts, Selby were very definitely up against it in the first half – it didn’t help that Selby seemed incapable of winning their own line out in the first 25 minutes of the match. After 26 minutes prop Tom Bell was replaced by new signing Thomas Coates after suffering a shoulder injury but another Stephen Riley penalty 10 minutes later gave Yarnbury a 6 points to nil advantage before Selby fly half Josh Cruise missed 2 difficult penalty chances. With half time approaching, the Selby’s backs enjoyed a purple patch and it was from one of their moves in added on time that Selby took the lead, perhaps fortuitously, when Cruise chipped through the Yarnbury defence from 20 metres with the ball eventually ricocheting to number 8 Martin Protheroe whose determined sprint to the line resulted in a try under the posts and an easy conversion for Cruise – Selby in front at half time by 7 points to 6.

The second half was only 2 minutes old when some sparkling back play by Webster, Weller Porter and Lunt won a scrum on the Yarnbury 5 metre line – the forwards duly won the ball which was spread to Cruise who executed a smart drop goal to give Selby a 10 points to 6 advantage. The rest of the half yielded no further scores with Selby having to survive some fairly regular batterings from the Yarnbury forwards. With the intensity of the game still at fever pitch, tempers of all 30 players on the pitch flared after 53 minutes, although this was never a ‘dirty’ game, with Cruise being the unlucky player yellow carded when any one of a number of players could have suffered the same fate. Matthew Wood replaced Martin Protheroe after 56 minutes and Selby were down to 13 players 3 minutes later after second row forward Karim Brown was sent to the bin for 10 minutes – despite this Yarnbury were unable to break Selby’s defensive resolve. With Cruise and Brown back on and Protheroe re-joining the fray in place of Rob Triffitt and Alex Arthur replacing Charlton McCoy, Selby began to look more comfortable but still had to repel phase after phase from the tiring Yarnbury forwards with Protheroe turning over possession on at least 2 crucial occasions and held out for the win which they just about deserved. If ever there was a game that was won by a magnificent, organised defence, then this was it, when the conditions negated Selby’s normal style of running rugby. In the end the Yarnbury forwards simply ran out of ideas with their backs unable to provide any effective attacking options.