Excellent defence sets up victory at Burnham

19/11/06 - Somerset Vase Round 1: Burnham-On-Sea 0 v 19 North Petherton

North Petherton gave a much improved performance in their second match of the weekend on Sunday to get through to the second round of the Somerset Vase. It was a performance typified by some strong defence throughout as Pethy again left Burnham without conceding a point, as they had done in their last league victory over Burnham at the end of September.

Having been well-beaten by Petherton in that game, the home team came out firing and were able to put some early pressure on the visitors despite playing into the wind. Pethy managed to ride out the early onslaught and were soon spending most of their time in the Burnham half thanks to some good kicking by fly-half Lloyd Williams. Burnham’s aggression at the breakdown soon began to cost them though, as the referee pinged them for a number of infringements in the rucks. Full-back Tom Williams began to make the penalties count for Petherton, and put them 3-0 ahead with a difficult kick into the wind from outside the 22.

Petherton continued to apply the pressure to try and make the wind advantage count, and they finally broke their recent try-scoring drought with a well-taken try scored by Tom Williams. Following a break by speedy centre Rob Havill, the ball was quickly recycled and passed through several pairs of hands before the finishing touch was applied by Williams in the right-hand corner. Williams then missed the difficult conversion.

He was soon back on target though with a penalty after Burnham were lucky to see their blindside flanker only receive a yellow card. This followed a blatant stamp on the neck of Petherton second row Simon Gingell. On the stroke of half-time Williams added a further penalty to give the visitors a healthy 14-0 lead going into the second period.

Pethy began the half counter-attacking well after some mis-directed kicks from the Burnham backs, and were soon in their opponent’s 22. A series of line-outs and penalties failed to produce a further score, and Burnham were again reduced to 14 men after their open-side flanker was yellow carded, after one infringement too many, for handling the ball in a scrum.

This seemed to galvanise the home-side, who felt that they were being harshly treated by the referee, and they dominated most of the last 20 minutes with some direct running from their big forwards and some good attacking play. However, the Pethy defence was resolute, and despite losing Simon Gingell to the sin-bin for killing the ball, a quick turnover in the Petherton half led to a series of attacks in the Burnham 22. After some good rucking by the forwards in several phases of play, Lloyd Williams was able to side-step through a gap in the covering defence for a good try to seal the victory.

The conversion was missed and Burnham dominated the last five minutes with a succession of five-meter penalties, but were unable to score any points due to some whole-hearted defending. This was typified by the excellent tackling from flankers Ross Finlayson and Chris Mantyk, whilst hooker Miles McNeillie was also outstanding; covering a lot of ground throughout the match, in what was a good team performance.

Tries: T.Williams, L.Williams

Cons:

Pens: T.Williams (3)

Drop Goals:

Team: 15. T.Williams, 14. B.Williams, 13. M.Brown, 12. Havill, 11. A.Walford, 10. L.Williams, 9. Ryburuk, 1. Glanville, 2. McNeillie, 3. M.Burge, 4. Gingell, 5. M.Coles (Rep. Varcoe), 6. Mantyk, 7. Finlayson, 8. Lees. Reps Unused: R.O'Connor, G.Coles, Kirk