National League One: Loughborough Students 30 Wharfedale 8

ON A wet and moderately windy day in the Midlands, the Green Machine were given a lesson in how to control possession and dominate territory by mixing phases of play.

The students sometimes went through 20 phases of play before either surrendering possession or scoring.

They did the latter five times with a combination of forwards and backs.

Statistics do not give a fair reflection of the score, however, as Wharfedale were 100 per cent on their line-out, and indeed went beyond this and allowed Loughborough meagre possession from this set-piece.

In the scrum, the Green Machine were dominant all afternoon and caused the home side problems on their own put-in.

But mistakes were costly – most notably three long kicks by Loughborough were fumbled and valuable field position was squandered.

Handling errors could have been caused by the wet and windy conditions but the ball seemed to be a lot drier when fielded by the Midlands team.

Dale started brightly and were three points ahead from a Jamie Guy penalty, although this was cancelled out two minutes later when Williams Edwards replied from a similar angle and distance.

Playing into the breeze, Dale shared the honours in the first half and were only trailing by a converted try from George de Cothi, a lovely dummy from the scrum half creating space for him to nip over under the posts.

Rotimi Segun, Paolo Odogwu (2) and Andrew Boyce scored unconverted tries in the second half, with Dale’s Chris Howick crossing for an consolation try.