6:39pm Wednesday 27th January 2010
By Gordon Thomas
The Greens made it ten points in seven days as they eventually demolished Forest of Dean visitors Cinderford by the clear enough margin of four tries to one as rugby made a welcome return to the Avenue for the first time since early December.
Wharfedale, though hardly at full throttle, were able to cruise to a comfortable victory and produce a final spurt of acceleration which clinched a somewhat flattering bonus point.
The Foresters in contrast looked very much a side still suffering from their long lay-off and much in need of reacquainting themselves both with each other and with competitive game-time on the field of play.
Wharfedale were superior to Cinderford in all the key areas. They overpowered them at the breakdown providing their backs with a deal of good ball. They were sharper when it mattered at the set piece and were alert enough in defence to reduce Cinderford to mere plodding probing around the tackle area and some wasteful aerial hoofing.
The Greens had much more creativity behind even if they still lacked fluency and failed to nail some promising approach work with effective finish near the line.
And Wharfedale even managed to make light of a comparatively far more damaging yellow card to influential flanker Latu Maka’afi than the one suffered by the visitors in the loss of flanker David Bufton And in particular Cinderford lacked a dominant performer with anything like the sheer determination and competitive drive of the home fly-half Mark Bedworth.
He may have been far from his imperious bullying best. His distribution at times lacked fluency and he took time to find his place kicking boots, failing with three early shots while Cinderford’s Brett Turner effortlessly stroked over four successive penalties to give his side a 12-10 interval lead.
Once he got his sights trained Bedworth too rifled four successive penalties – the last from just beyond halfway – and added a drop goal to gun down the visitors’ last piece of real resistance and take his side two scores clear.
In a match when clinical finishing was hardly the order of the day, he finished off, on the half hour, some neat phases of stiff driving pressure at the line with a bruising short break for the Greens to recapture the lead with their second try.
Finally, with the game drifting tamely to a close Bedworth snaffled a well-timed interception to race clear the length of the field for the final try. This together with his routine conversion provided the fly-half with a personal tally of 27 well-deserved points.
Though Wharfedale were down at the break they really had only themselves to blame.
They secured an early try from a fine counter-attacking touchline break by Andy Hodgson – by far the most enterprising runner on view – which did need a touch of fortune to complete.
The full-back’s attempted inside pass found only a Cinderford defender but Maka’afi was alertly on hand to gather the rebound and power over in the corner. But the Greens failed to capitalise on the early promise of their opening try.
And if they were prodigal in attack they managed to be even more so in defence, managing to concede penalties on the few isolated attacking footholds the opposition managed throughout the half, which were gratefully converted by Turner’s accurate boot.
Cinderford found themselves ahead without offering, leave alone breaking, attacking sweat.
Wharfedale’s increasing control of second-half possession exerted sufficient pressure on the visitors for them to concede regular penalty opportunities, gratefully accepted on 41, 45, 58 and 68 minutes.
Cinderford, with the game slipping away, at last managed a meaningful attack, lock Dan Wright crashing over. But any thought of revival was short-lived as Bedworth’s fine drop goal restored the Greens’ control.
A rash of well-timed fresh impact off the bench settled things as decisively for the home side as a similar infusion had the previous week.
Props Chris Steel and the ever-improving Adam Mason added the sort of fresh scrum ballast that had the Foresters’ eight in spectacular retreat.
And the pace and sinuous stepping running of Luke Gray from full-back immediately paid equally spectacular and attractive dividends.
First his sweeping finish to a Dan Solomi break was overturned by the touch judge for a clear fumble by the flanker. But he was not to be denied minutes later when gliding clear on the overlap for the best try of the game to settle the match at 30 -17.
WHARFEDALE: A Hodgson; I Dixon (L Gray 58), C Malherbe, J Tincknell, S Horsfall (D Hall 65); M Bedworth, S Cottrell; M Chivers, G Hindle (A Mason 47), N Dickinson (C Steel 58); O Renton (R Brown 65), A Allen; L Maka’afi; D Solomi, R Baldwin.
CINDERFORD: B Turner; R Winchle, D Knight, D Scourfield, O Winterbottom; D Pointon, P Knight; P Kennedy, C Hall, S Knight; D Bufton, D Wright; A Nicholls, C O’Neil, M Panoho.
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