SELBY RUFC 23 v 11 YARNBURY (HORSFORTH) RFC

Report by Ray Adamson

On an ideal afternoon and with perfect pitch conditions, Selby put in a much improved performance against newly promoted Yarnbury to record their second League win of the season. Despite missing two of their most influential players in Dan Porter and Josh Cruise, the home side showed a willingness to play with ball in hand from the outset. With Tom Bell putting in a strong performance on his return to the front row and a terrific individual performance from Ben Booth who was at the heart of everything Selby did, the forwards were able to achieve parity at the set piece and showed greater control at the breakdown. As previously suggested this allowed the Selby backs to show their natural fluent style of play with newcomer Cody Whittaker orchestrating things expertly from stand off.

Despite several promising phases in the opening minutes Selby had to wait almost quarter of an hour before registering their first score. An excellent kick to the corner from the base of a scrum by the industrious Neil Francis drove Selby close to the Yarnbury line and forced a line out inside the visitors' 22. A clean Line-out take created the chance for the forwards to attack the midfield and a sniping run from Francis was converted into a clean break by Alex Webster who chose the perfect running line to scythe through the Yarnbury centres to cross under the posts, presenting Whittaker with a simple first successful kick in Selby colours.

From the re-start Selby returned to the attack and, using the short side to great effect, forced the Yarnbury defence to concede a penalty in front of the sticks just 25 metres from their line. Whittaker duly converted and Selby looked to be in control of the game. As Selby continued to dominate, Yarnbury found it difficult to contain the home side and were depleted as two players were shown yellow cards within minutes of each other. Despite their numerical advantage Selby were only able to add a further Whittaker penalty before the break, which arrived with Selby in a comfortable position at 13-nil.

Those supporters hoping to see Selby take the game away from Yarnbury in the second half were in for a shock as Yarnbury took advantage of a drop in intensity by the Selby side following the re-start. A penalty for a dangerous tackle which saw the otherwise impressive Dominic Bosher yellow carded after 52 minutes gave ex-Selby player Carl Patterson the chance to get his team on the scoreboard with a straightforward kick from the 22. Within two minutes the gap was reduced to a single score by Patterson's second successful penalty as the Selby midfield were caught offside in front of their own posts.

The visitors were dealt a hammer blow when Selby were gifted a try just 3 minutes later. An attempted kick to the corner by Whittaker seemed to be heading over the dead ball line when the Yarnbury full back inexplicably decided to keep the ball live. His clearance kick skewed off the side of his boot landing into the arms of Jordan McCoy barely five metres from the line. A slick off-load to acting Skipper Duncan Hardy put him into space and gave him the simplest of tries wide out on the right. Although Whittaker was unable to convert from a difficult angle the 2 score advantage had been restored.

The result was put beyond doubt from the re-start on the hour mark with an excellent and deserved try by Neil Francis. Ben Booth made a crucial take at the kick off and the Selby forwards set off at pace down the blind side. When Booth re-appeared to make the initial line break he found Tom Bell in support. As he took the tackle, Bell was able to make a fantastic one-handed offload to Francis who dummied and side-stepped his way into space and sprinted the last 22 metres, roared on by the large Selby crowd. Whittaker's failed conversion did nothing to subdue the buzz of excitement around the ground but marked Selby's final scoring chance of the afternoon.

Yarnbury were able to reduce the deficit by an unconverted try with just under a quarter of an hour to go courtesy of a lack of concentration amongst the Selby side. A needless penalty was conceded on the Yarnbury 22 for impeding the player after a kick and when a quick tap penalty was taken a huge gap in the Selby defence was exploited by the visiting three quarters who handled impressively to put Jack Myerscough in for the try wide out on the right hand side. Patterson just failed to convert as his kick hit the upright and bounced out.

As both sides tired the quality of Rugby also diminished and with no further scores looking likely Selby were comfortably able to maintain their 12 point advantage to the final whistle.

A much improved performance saw impressive debuts for Cody Whittaker and Sam Harrison (another product of Selby Colt’s team) who showed great pace on the couple of occasions he was given the chance to run after replacing Jack Guest for the last 25 minutes. With the front row more than holding their own and the back five working hard in all areas of the pitch, Selby will be hoping to establish a similar platform for their talented backs throughout the rest of the League Season.