With West Park St Helens losing to Middlesbrough we move 8 points clear of the bottom two and with the Merseysiders only having 3 games left to play it is an unassailable lead.

Many games of rugby are dominated by defences, but this certainly wasn’t one of them. The high score was definitely testament to the lack of quality in defence rather than anything exceptional in attack. Missed tackles were common place but it did make for an entertaining game, with some end-to-end stuff in the second half.

Darlington had the best of the first half, dominating possession and territory but looked like going into the break behind on the scoreboard until Ollie Mabbutt raced in for a try just before the half-time whistle, capitalising on turnover ball to race away from inside his own half. Shaun Richardson’s conversion levelled the scores at 12-12.

Before that West had made the most of their only two visits to the home 22. On 10 minutes Paul Vinnicombe strolled in for a try after some nice interplay on the left wing between Tim Sawyer and Dominic Morrison had moved play up towards the line and a number of surges by the forwards sucked in the defence to create an overlap on the right. Darlington had levelled the scores when their main attacking threat, prop Dave Tunstead, scored with a typical barraging run from the 22, bouncing off three tacklers on his way to the line. A flurry of penalties given away by Darlington allowed West to move play into the 22 for second time and with hooker Michael Stowe dismissed to the sin-bin, debutant Stu Waites slipped a nice pass to Moss for the centre to go in untouched and follow-up with the conversion.

With Mabbutt’s try levelling things up at the break it looked like being a tight second half but that wasn’t to be the case.

Tunstead was shown a yellow card for a punch and in the 10 minutes he was on the side-line West took the game away from Darlington. On 55 minutes Andy Cheslin showed great strength to battle his way over for a try in the left corner and then with 64 minutes gone Carlo Robinson wasn’t spotted on the short side of a ruck following a close line-out and on receiving the ball he made no mistake, going in easily for a crucial try. From the restart Darlington looked to move the ball wide and a big tackle from Andy Cheslin knocked the ball loose and Peter Hodgson pounded to collect the ball and race clear for a try under the posts. Moss converted and in 10 minutes the score had gone from 12-12 to 29-12 and the game looked over.

Darlington fought back though and Tunstead finished off an attack with his second try to give his side a glimmer of home with 10 minutes to go but Waites slotted over a drop goal to push West further ahead. Darlington still weren’t giving in came back again, this time Tony Taylor finishing off a simple backs move with a try in the corner. But with time ticking down and Moss on the sidelines having been replaced by Greg Edwards, Waites secured the victory with a well struck penalty.

So, West’s first league win away from home has been a long time coming but hopefully it will be the start of better things on the road, starting next week at Beverley. If the defence can be more like the one we are used to seeing at Brinkburn than the one evident today it’ll go a long way towards securing that second away win.


West: I Dixon, C Cheslin, Hodgson, Moss (Edwards), A Cheslin, Waites, Williamson, Stewart, Sawyer, C Robinson (Coates), T Dixon, I Robinson, J Boatman, Morrison (D Boatman), Vinnicombe

Tries: Vinnicombe, Moss, A Cheslin, C Robinson, Hodgson
Cons: Moss 2
Pen: Waites
DG: Waites

Darlington: Anderson, Taylor, Pugh, Bivens, Kibirige, D Richardson, S Richardson, Tunstead, Stowe, Osleton, Taylor, Livingston, Goddard, Mabbutt, Knox.
Reps: Hargreaves, O’Donnell, Baldwin

Tries: Tunstead 2, Mabutt, Taylor
Cons: S Richardson

Sin-bin: Stowe, Tunstead