First half injuries to playmaker Gav Painter and Liam Bailey forced both to watch from the side-lines and whilst we had a ready-made replacement for Gav with Stu Waites stepping up from full-back, he too suffered a serious shoulder injury in the second half. We were left to play the final quarter with Aaron Myers at inside centre and Peter Youll in the 10 shirt.
Despite the reshuffle it was a heroic defensive effort in the closing stages as Morley mounted a series of attacks looking to overturn a 17-3 second-half deficit. When we lost Aaron Myers to the sin-bin with 20 minutes to play Morley did score through elusive full-back Dante van der Merwe but a missed conversion kept the lead at more than a single score. With plenty of time left and our makeshift line-up beginning to fatigue Morley caught a glimpse of a comeback but we weren’t about let that happen.
We had suffered in the scrum during the first half but somehow pushed Morley off two scrums deep in our 22 at crucial moments and pressured the visiting lineout into mistakes. Stand-out defensive work from Anth Carr, diving in to force a knock-on when a try looked certain, and Ryan Painter, with a double tackle in the right corner, were key moments in an all-round team effort.
In the first half we had also absorbed pressure but proved clinical in attack. Morley had the better of the early exchanges and missed an early penalty after a late tackle by Dan Boatman. Against the run of play we got the first score on 23 minutes. A maul on half-way advanced well into the Morley half and sucked in defenders. Owen Bennett spotted a gap and peeled off on the blind side, drawing the last defender before passing to Ryan Painter who raced up the touchline to dive in at the right corner.
More maul success brought our second score on the half hour, this time rolling away from an initial defensive surge by the visitors for Dan Boatman to emerge from the pile of bodies in the opposite corner as the try scorer. Mark Chester pulled 3 points back for Morley in the closing stages of the half but we went into half time happy with a 10-3 lead.
The crucial try came just 4 minutes into the second period with an offload from Eldon Myers setting up an attack in the left corner. We kept the ball alive well and eventually moved it back to the right where Joe Willis went over untouched by the corner flag. Stu Waites found his range with a great touchline conversion for a 17-3 lead.
Chester had the opportunity to close the gap with another penalty almost straight from the restart but skewed a relatively straight-forward kick wide. It signalled the start of the visitor’s resurgence and as our penalty count grew the inevitable yellow-card came for Myers as he dove in and tackled the scrum-half at a ruck on the goal-line. That led to the van der Merwe try and ultimately the defensive effort that secured the victory.
Whilst the win closes the gap between us and our visitors to just 3 points they do have the luxury of two games in hand so it would take a remarkable turnaround for them to drop out of the play-off place. With injuries to our two fly-halves there will be some concern going into the visit to Driffield next week with a welcome week off following that before fourth-placed Alnwick come to Brinkburn for another crucial game.
West: Waites, Butcher, E Myers, Youll, G Painter, R Painter, Coates, Rollins, Angus, Boatman, Bennett, Bailey, Myers, Miller.
Reps: Rafferty, Carr, Edwards
Tries: R Painter, Boatman, Willis
Con: Waites
YC: Myers, Boatman
Morley: van der Merwe, Sim, Knowles, Frantzis, Bradshaw, Chester, Sewell, Benn, Ashford, Bell, Head, Brown, Watts, Flegg, Smyth.
Reps: Dinsdale, Richmond, Glynn
Try: van der Merwe
Pen: Chester
Referee: Ryan Oliver [Warwickshire]