Rugby Lion’s dismal end of season form continued with another home defeat to Caldy. Lion’s have lost six of their last eight games and slip to eighth place in the league. With two games still to go it is just as well that Lion’s have enough points in the bag to avoid being dragged into the relegation battle.

Caldy chose to play with the near gale force wind at their backs, and Lion’s did well to restrict the visitors to two penalty goals from Simon Mason. Caldy used the wind well to pin Rugby in their own half for most of the time, without ever threatening to score a try. From the restart after Mason had slotted his second penalty on twenty minutes, Alex Nash took the ball from a Caldy tap back and raced for the line. He was pulled down a metre short, but play was brought back after the tap back was deemed to have come off a Lion’s hand. Going in at half time only six points down was a good position to be in for the home side, they must have been looking forward to having the elements in their favour in the second half.

Rugby replaced props Tristan Wati and Terry Boneham with Rich Siveter and Jamie Tyers at the interval. It was vital for Rugby to start well in the second period, but instead they contrived to gift the visitors a try seconds after the restart. A poor clearance kick from Peter Glackin went straight to Caldy’s winger Ross. He chipped ahead into Lion’s 22 where Tyers made a hash of claiming the ball. Ross collected his own kick to score unopposed near the uprights. Mason converted into the wind to give the visitors a thirteen-point lead.

A lovely from the base of a scrum by Michael Rust was intended for winger Hawken. He was just beaten to the ball by a defender who took the ball over the try line for a five-metre scrum to Rugby. The ball was spun out to the right, and for once the passing and handling was good, and with plenty of support on hand, Chris Murphy skipped over for an easy try. Hawken converted to give the home side a lifeline, and get within a single score with twenty-five minutes still left to play.

Caldy Preview

The last home game, against Fylde, was only the second defeat at Webb Ellis Road since the first game there in early September last year. On that occasion our Lions were beaten by those other Leos from across the northern county boundary. The victors on that day, after holding second place in the league table for some considerable time, have slipped and Fylde are one of the chasing pack behind Darlington MP, who now occupy that play-off place. It is rather unfortunate that Rugby Lions should recently have been short of fit players in key positions with fixtures against Fylde and Harrogate. This Saturday’s visitors are Caldy RFC, promoted last season as champions of North 1. They have fared much better than the runners-up, Beverley who won the play-off against Dudley KS (now likely to be relegated).

Out of 23 games played, Caldy have 11 wins, two draws and ten losses: After the last set of games Caldy, with a 27-22 home win against Macclesfield, passed Rugby Lions to take up sixth place in the table. In the earlier fixture in early December at Paton Park, Rugby won a tight game 11-15.

Having been beaten by the Lions on their own turf, Caldy will doubtless be making every effort to turn the tables on Saturday so, provided the Lions can field a reasonably balanced selection, a good game should be in prospect, but once again the winner will be the team that puts in the best disciplined all-round performance. Hopefully, for their faithful supporters, it will be the Lions.