Spirited effort goes unrewarded.

What a difference a week makes! Following the previous game at Fleetwood when Moor’s performance was the worst of the season, they travelled to Lancaster last Saturday to play league leaders Vale of Lune and produced one of their better games. Mindful of the match at Green Lane at the start of season when Moor allowed a 26 point lead to be overturned, they were determined that this should not happen again.

They put themselves under pressure from the start however, when they failed to cleanly take the kick-off and the home side took advantage to stay camped in the Moor 22 and opened the scoring after 5 minutes with a cleverly worked try from their inside centre. This was the start of fairly regular scoring from both sides in what was to prove a highly entertaining game and shortly afterwards Moor opened their account with a Phil Thomas penalty.

Mid-way through the half Moor then took the lead when they turned over the ball and flanker Tom Ireland broke blind and linked with centre Zander Claassen, who sold an outrageous dummy and sped over for a try, converted by Thomas. Soon afterwards this lead was extended by another Thomas penalty but the deficit was cut to just 1 point within 5 minutes when the Vale left-winger scored their second try, this time converted. Vale then went ahead in the second minute of injury time at the interval with a penalty, to make the half-time score 15-13 to the home side.

There was an exchange of penalties early on in the second half as the game opened up, with both sides committed to open, running rugby. This was to prove Moor’s undoing however, as on 18 minutes they attempted to force the game far too early and ran the ball out of their 22 instead of kicking for touch. An attempted long pass out to Moor’s left wing dropped short and was intercepted by the home side’s right winger who just escaped the clutches of the Moor defence to run in a converted try under the posts. Two further penalties were traded, before Claassen was put away down the right wing to run in a try from some 40 metres, converted by Thomas.

With just 5 minutes remaining and 2 points in it, this set up a grandstand finish and both teams could have added to their scores but for sound defence from either side. The final whistle came as a huge relief to Vale, winning 28-26, and as a big disappointment to Moor, as, but for one unnecessary and over-adventurous bit of play, they could have won the game.

Next Saturday, Moor play their last home league game of the season against Upper Eden, k.o. 3:00 pm.