Dalesmen slay Norsemen with 20 minutes of magic

(previous garbled version now updated) 

In the opening 20 minutes of this absorbing encounter, tries from both Ilkley wings put the icing on a display of sublime quality akin to the finale of a performance of Scarborough's most famous crooner “Seaside” Danny Wilde.

Scarborough are a club with ambition as demonstrated by their plans to relocate to a green field 32 acre site and develop a major new complex. Their promotion challenge this season took a nosedive as the Dalesmen confirmed their early season victory with another hard-earned away win on the East coast. This victory keeps them two points ahead of nearest rivals Selby and sets up a nail-biting finale to this tremendous season.

A good number of Ilkley supporters had made the trip to the coast.

The galeforce winds of the previous evening had subsided, but a tricky cross wind gusted across the pitch to make kicking difficult to judge for both kicker and receiver.

Referee Mike Ramsden was no stranger to the Ilkley side. They knew they had to be on best behaviour for this key encounter.

The Norsemen opened with tremendous venom and, for five minutes, penned the visitors back.

Then followed the two moments of sheer magic and class which effectively won the game for the Dalesmen.

The show started as Scarborough chipped over the Ilkley back line, but they had not reckoned with the silky skills of full-back Stuart Vincent. These kicks are meat and drink to the mercurial Vincent. He swooped onto the ball like an eagle its prey, took one step to the side and found 30 metres of clear space before offloading to Liam Frost. Frost at full tilt is an awesome prospect. He made another 20 metres, delicately sidestepped inside his marker and found Terence Sibanda at a gallop on his outside. Sibanda finished the move over the final 20 metres and scored wide out. It was a try of rare quality which drew generous applause from the stunned home support. The wind spoiled the grand finale to act one of the show as Peter Shanks’ conversion attempt drifted wide of the mark.

It was not long before act two of this mini super show began. Frost suffered a high tackle (in no way malicious) on half way. The Dalesmen had a lineout on the Scarborough 10 metre line. It was won well by the superb Dan Wright. Ollie Coughlan fed Jack Shaylor who broke the first line of defence before setting up great first phase ball. It came out, first left and then right quickly and skillfully through at least six pairs of hands to Simon Smith on the right wing. Smith is unstoppable from 5 metres. He barged over to score another super try. It too went unconverted. The super show ended, but it was 10 – 0 after only ten minutes.

Somewhere in the build up to the try Mr Ramsden had spotted an offense which he considered warranted a yellow card. Prop Jamie Drayton was consigned to the sin-bin.

It was almost impossible to keep play up those standards for the full eighty minutes, but both sets of supporters sensed a big score was on the cards.

Sibanda had another thrust. This time the try was prevented by a deliberate knock-on in front of goal. Shanks slotted the penalty to increase the lead to 13 – 0.

This Ilkley score was immediately negated as Josh Bullen converted a penalty for the Norsemen from 40 metres to make it 13 – 3.

The game then settled down to the kind of encounter you would expect of two teams in the higher echelons.

The Dalesmen maintained their superiority but failed to capitalize. The tight five were dominating set pieces. John Cooksey, big Jon Hutchinson and Fred Matthews had the better of the battle at the coalface, pushing Scarborough back or turning the scrum at will. The lineout was working well, with new boy Reiner Botha and Dan Wright clearing up everything aimed at them. Their loose play was as good as it gets. Stuart Brewer was doing his usual solid job at the back. Charles Cudworth and Iain McKenzie provided great support both in attack and moreso in defence.

Out wide too the Ilkley defensive lines were too good for the home side. Scarborough simply struggled to get anything meaningful going.

Ilkley’s play became frenetic and, perhaps too impatient to add more scores quickly, good ball was wasted.

To their credit the Norsemen picked up their game but, certainly in the first period, they had only one real sniff of the Ilkley line. They contrived to knock-on close to the line in the face of great Dalesmen defence.

Half time came after 48 minutes with Scarborough probably rather surprised to still be very much in the game.

Coach Kay could not risk changing things round just yet.

The second period was a whole new ball-game. The Norsemen had picked themselves up and clearly showed they still thought they could win it.

Ilkley’s slightly frenetic mood continued and, for a while, it seemed they might concede to the rejuvenated home side.

A really tough uncompromising encounter developed.

Ilkley probed through Frost but the ball was lost close to the Scarborough line. The Scarborough scrum had by now got itself settled. The danger was repelled.

Kay swapped Shaylor and Shanks to try and bring something new to proceedings, but it was the Dalesmens’ turn to defend.

An Ilkley scrum inside Scarborough’s half produced a penalty in front of goal. Shanks relieved some of the tension with another 3 points. 16 - 3, thirty minutes to go.

Scarborough had several chances to get close as a result of Ilkley indiscretions. A lineout and drive from 5 metres was repelled to the 22. Then great tackling in midfield knocked the Norsemen backwards further still. But if Ilkley’s tackling was good, then so was Scarborough’s. Neither team could break the stranglehold, though both went agonizingly close. It looked as though the Dalesmen were going to hold on.

Cudworth succumbed to a painful groin, Mark Hibbs deputized.

The home side were gradually but perceptibly gaining the initiative. A high ball bobbled agonizingly over Shaylor’s head. EJ Jooste pounced and charged over the Ilkley line from 25 metres out. To all intents he looked to have scored, but from somewhere Sibanda had got back to turn him as he dived for the line. Mr Ramsden ruled held up. The Norsemen had a 5 metre scrum. They knocked on as a score looked certain. Now Ilkley’s scrum wobbled. Scarborough got the penalty. The tap and charge was too strong and finally flanker Terblanche bullocked over for the score.

Suddenly the arrears were only 8 points (2 scores). Mr Ramsden added to the agony for the visiting supporters by ordering the failed conversion to be retaken. This time it was good and now, remarkably, only a score was required to snatch the home win. 16 – 10 was the slender lead.

It took another piece of magic and no little skill and strength from the Dalesmen to dash the hopes of the home crowd.

Scarborough, irrationally, kicked the ball towards Smith. He gathered and broke two tackles, making fifteen metres in the process, to set up good ball. Suddenly there were Ilkley men with space that, for the last hour had just not been there. Coughlan set his backs going and the ball positively flashed down the line via Shaylor and Botha to find predator Sibanda waiting to pounce. His speed was enough to squeeze across the line to score in the corner and secure a tremendous away win, 21 – 10.

Even then Mr Ramsden’s watch deemed a further 3 minutes of play were left for a response. It was not forthcoming. The Dalesmen could now enjoy their seaside night out knowing that yet another job had been done, and done well.

The seaside theme remains this week as Bridlington are the visitors to Stacks Field. Kick-off is at 3 p.m. A big crowd is anticipated as the season heads for an exciting climax.

Meantime Ilkley’s second team kept up their winning run of league matches with a workmanlike if ugly win over Bradford and Bingley, 30 points to 3. That stalwart, colossus Tony Greig bagged a hat trick, with Chris Weatherby and Martin Hemingway adding two more. Andrew Rhodes added the other 5 points with his trusty boot.

This is the Scarborough version of the match –very fair!!!

Scarborough 1st XV VS Ilkley RUFC
Score 10 - 21
by Dave Campbell

Scarborough never recovered from a couple of spectacular Ilkley tries in the opening ten minutes of the game and played second fiddle for long periods thereafter. However heads never went down and a plucky, committed performance saw the Newby men play their full part in an absorbing encounter which was only settled in favour of the visitors with a try deep in injury time at the end of the game.
Scarborough took the game to a lively visiting outfit from the start and were pressing just outside the Ilkley 22 when a chip through from fly-half Josh Bullen had centre Ollie Hillier stretching to collect. The Ball was snatched from the despairing grasp of Hillier by fullback Stuart Vincent who injected real pace down the Ilkley left flank through a stretched home defence before releasing Liam Frost. The Ilkley outside centre executed a sublime shimmy, foxed the Newby defence and sent in winger Terence Sibanda for a try right out of the top drawer. Inside centre Peter Shanks failed to add the extras but the Dalesmen were 5-0 to the good with only 3 minutes on the clock.
And before the Newby-men could draw breath the visitors had doubled their score. Another blistering run down the Ilkley left by Sibanda saw the ball moved slickly infield and though a Scarborough infringement held things up for a penalty, the ball was moved quickly wide for right wing Simon Smith to dive in for an unconverted try and a 10-0 lead in the 8th minute. That appeared to be ‘game-set-and-match’ to Ilkley and it looked like a case of how many? Particularly as prop Jamie Drayton was sin-binned for an offence in the lead up to the try. The visitors appeared to have too much firepower for a pedestrian Newby outfit that had also lost the services of influential lock forward Wayne Adams with an ankle injury.
However Scarborough’s class of 2008 are a stubborn bunch and all fifteen rolled up their sleeves and got stuck in. By that I mean very much by fair means, some mighty crunching tackles came from flankers Ethynn Terblanche and ‘new kid on the block,’ EJ Jooste. Not to be outdone, Ollie Hillier and Fullback Graham Jeffrey put in some big hits of their own. An exchange of penalties between Ilkley’s Vincent and Bullen mid-way through the half were surprisingly the only further points scored in the opening 40 minutes and the teams turned round with Ilkley 13-3 to the good.
Scarborough tightened up their work on the set-pieces after the break and began to get their fair share of possession from first phase which saw scrum-half Bill Freeman begin to bring his experience to bear on the proceedings. However some of the handing in the threes left much to be desired when compared to their opposite numbers and apart from Hillier and Jeffrey they lacked penetration. However, Ilkley under pressure, looked a lot less composed than they had done on the front foot early in the game. Star man in the visiting pack was lock Dan Wright who was everywhere. Shanks took the pressure off his team-mates when he nudged the west Yorkshiremen 16-3 ahead with a penalty in the 55th minute.
Scarborough dug deeper and started to strike at the heart of the visitors defence thanks to some very positive running from Jeffrey and Jooste who were featuring more and more in the game. And it looked to everyone in the showground as if Jeffrey had scored between the sticks as he broke, hacked on, collected and powered over in the 75th minute. Everyone except referee Mike Ramsden that is, who judged that Jeffrey had been held up over the line by the despairing efforts of a visiting defender. However justice was done when following the ensuing five metre scrum, flanker Terblanche powered over, the ball having gone through five phases. Bullen slotted the touchline conversion to reduce the arrears to six points in the 77th minute.
With the score at 10-16 a converted try would have brought the Newby-men an unlikely single point victory and they ran the re-start back at Ilkley. But just as a mistimed chip through had resulted in Sibanda’s opening try his second and clinching score also came from possession kicked away. Centre Liam Frost gathered a loose kick on halfway, moved the ball left through hands for the nippy left wing to squeeze in at the corner.
Although they lost the plot for long periods of the game, Ilkley were the best side seen at Newby this season and fully deserved their victory. This was always going to be a tough one for Scarborough but to their credit they never threw in the towel and gave themselves a chance to win the game at the death. Up front, Ian Williams grafted well in the front row with EJ Jooste the pick of the loose forwards after a shaky start. Once again Bill Freeman used his ‘old head’ when first phase possession was shaky in the first half then worked hard in attack with his half-back partner Josh Bullen during the second 40 minutes. Ollie Hillier and Graham Jeffrey were the pick of backs in defence where their tackling was awesome and in attack where Jeffrey looked like the only man likely to break a solid Ilkley back line.

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