At the start both teams acknowledged the likelihood that one team would lose their unbeaten record and it was not surprising, therefore, that both fought for every scrap of possession and every inch of ground in a really good contest.
From the kick off, Preston confirmed what we expected – strong running forwards and centres with their No 10 the fulcrum of their play. The packs were evenly matched – initially we had the advantage up front then as the first half wore on, we started to go backwards in the set piece, only for the pattern to be reversed in the 2nd half.
We pressed home our early advantage - clever positional kicking from Mike Barlow led to a 5 metre scrum and Dan Eccles forced his way over and with MB duly converting. Preston hit back pretty quickly with a try of their own taking advantage of an overlap as we were sucked into the breakdown in midfield.
We then extended our lead with a well worked try of our own – good interchange between backs and forwards took us up to the left of Preston`s 22 from where we spun the ball out for Zak Mertza to score close to the right hand corner.
A penalty for Preston after 40 minutes brought about a half time score of 12 -8 in our favour.
That we didn`t score in the second half, and with the play being concentrated in our half of the pitch it would be difficult to say that we deserved to win. Preston repeated their scoring of the first half and whilst 2 glorious breaks in the last 10 mins, firstly from James Drew and secondly from Mike Barlow nearly, and probably should have, led to tries which would have almost certainly maintained our unbeaten record.
That said, we enjoyed the contest – Mike Waddington put in yet another very impressive shift up front, whilst Andy Broadhurst and Jamie Smith, coming in at hooker and scrum half respectively, both put in very solid performances.
RJH