The first of our backs to be on the scoreboard was Jack Harrison. With Harry Mayes returning from injury, he threw a beautifully timed miss pass to Jack who was able to beat the last defender and gazelle his way in.

Horden and Peterlee eventually crashed over after a series of pick and go balls through the forwards. Not the prettiest but it evened the game. Danny Quinn was again all over the pitch and after a good line break and sustained pressure on the Horden line, Quinny hit the on rushing James Tyers who had Kyle Jamieson, playing in an unconventional role of flanker, off his shoulder for the easy run in below the sticks. Quinny added the extras. Unfortunately for the home team, Horden and Peterlee were to equalise before the half.

HT 14 – 14

The man who covered every blade of grass last week was to get his rewards this week. Paul Moss had bolstered the Stags scrum after a masterful idea from Gez, to put him at 8, paid off massively. Mossy picked from the back of an attacking scrum and from there Horden had no answer to the powerful runner who was able to draw the last defender and offload to Quinny.

Another to return to the fold was Harry-Jon Morgan. The young man made his first start for the stags and knitted perfectly together with Harry Mayes in the centres. This made work easy for Stags 10 Martin Todd who only needed to hit up “Harry” all day long. In this instance it was Mayes to take the score after some absolute champagne rugby, mixing front rower Craig Hadwen, into the fold, as described in the bar afterwards.

The last score of the day was through young Jordan Painter. From the restart, Mossy drew some defenders before delivering a truly sumptuous out the back of the hand pass to Painter who made great ground. Next phase meant Craig Hadwen, who had a monstrous game carrying and amazingly distributing but only through the medium of no look passes, crashed through the defensive line again, getting to the last defender before unleashing another perfectly timed pass to Painter.

The Stags were truly a formidable outfit with a great blend of age (in particular Hadwen, Larkin and Todd who would make this their second game in 24 hours after playing with the vets the night before) and youth (Josh Riley doing phenomenal work around the breakdown, Liam Smith running with a new found confidence pretty much over a bloke 3 times his mass and Harrison chatting to the back 3 throughout.) It’s exciting times and the Stags can truly push on the rest of this season to make a statement to the rest of the league when we travel to Middlesbrough to take on Acklam next Saturday.

Full Time – Stags 38 – 14 Horden

Squad – Hunter, Mould, Hadwen, Tyers, Simpson, Riley, Jamieson, Moss, Quinn, Todd, Smith, Morgan, Mayes, Painter, Harrison. Geritz, Evans Palliser, Larkin, Parker.

Scran – Sausage and chips. Handsome.