Moor take the spoils in final league match.

The Cumbrian coast was the destination for Moor last Saturday when they played Whitehaven-based St. Benedicts in their last game of the season. The game should have been played in January, but was cancelled due to the big freeze at the time and re-arranged for the end of the season. When the sides last met in October, Moor had a narrow four-point victory and Saturday’s result was to be just as close.

The Moor forwards were to prove dominant for the first half hour of the game with the home side having very little possession and being forced to defend for long periods. Despite this superiority, the visitor’s make-shift three-quarter line was unable to take advantage of a surfeit of possession and the side had to wait until midway through the half before opening its account with a Shaun Stirrup penalty, but almost immediately nearly allowed the opposition back into the game when a mistake at a lineout enable the latter to hack the ball up field and the lone Moor defender was penalised when trying to recover the ball; fortunately the resultant penalty kick bounced back off an upright. It was another Moor mistake five minutes later however, that allowed St. Benedicts to take the lead when, in what was their first real attacking move, a missed tackle in the centre enabled the ball to be passed down their back line for a converted try out wide. In the last two minutes of the half, the sides swapped a penalty goal apiece, as the home side took a somewhat surprising 10-6 lead at the break.

The second half proved not as one-sided as the first, but Moor continued to have the edge. In the opening minutes they missed with a penalty kick but the next time St. Benedicts were penalised some 10 metres from their own line, Moor rather enterprisingly elected to take a scrum. This paid off as for the next five minutes they kept the opposition pinned on the line and were eventually rewarded with another penalty that was taken quickly by Stirrup, who then fed prop John Jenks and the latter crashed over for a try, converted by the former. For the next ten minutes, the home side then produced their best rugby of the contest during which time they scored their second try, this time unconverted, following a line-out and a flowing move down their back line. Trailing by a couple of points, Moor’s backs finally began to click and from one move along their line, winger Tom Ireland collected the ball, stepped inside his opposite number and outpaced the full-back to score in the corner, the conversion being missed. This set up a grandstand finish, but Moor comfortably held on to win 18-15, a score that was closer than their earlier dominance would have suggested.