Moor secure home win with powerful second half display.

Moor hosted Upper Eden last Saturday in their last home league game of the season and were hoping to repeat their performance against the same opposition back in September when they recorded their biggest win of the year, 49-17. This certainly seemed possible from the start as Moor, playing into a very strong wind, caught their own kick-off and kept control of the ball until centre Nick Smith crashed over for a try after 3 minutes, converted by fellow-centre, Phil Thomas. This was to be their last score of the half however, as Upper Eden proceeded to keep them pinned in their own half with a combination of simple, yet effective rugby and the strong wind. Repeated kicks to touch kept Moor within their own 22 and only good defensive work prevented the visitors from scoring. On the occasions that they did mount any attacks, lapses in concentration, wrong options and overall loose play prevented the home side from gaining any benefit and there were only a few occurrences where they did threaten to add to their score.

Despite having territorial advantage, their opponents had to wait until the 35^th minute before opening their account. This came from a converted try following a line-out on the Moor 5-metre line, to give a 7-7 score-line at the interval.

Playing with the wind in the second half, Moor’s performance was completely transformed and they were to score at regular intervals, with each occurrence seemingly to strengthen their resolve, whilst weakening that of the opposition. A combination of sound forward play, especially in the loose, and slick handling by the backs produced a total of six tries, four of which were converted by Thomas. Two tries each were scored by full-back Zander Claassen and left wing Ivan Smetana, with one each for prop Jon Jenks and flanker Jim Hine and Claassen also produced a long distance drop goal from the visitor’s 10-metre line. In reply, Upper Eden did score a converted try late on but the game was well out of their reach by this time, yet the final score of 48-14 to Moor, although reflecting the latter’s dominance in the second half, did not do justice to the visitors, given their first half performance.

On Easter Monday, Moor are away at Tyldesley in a re-arranged league game, k.o. 3:00 pm.