MALTON NARROWLY EARN SEMI FINAL PLACE
In this Yorkshire Shield quarter final Malton came to Shay Lane missing their skipper Sam Triffitt,utility player Tom Hoggard and bruising winger Ali Fothergill. With the reshuffle Will Dunn, Ben Tenge, were given starts and on the wing 17year old Max Wainwright was given his baptism into senior rugby putting in a solid shift.
Salem opened the scoring on 14 minutes through their no3 after camping in Malton's half for a 5 pointer. Malton's possesion in this opening period was spoilt by a catalogue of basic errors, coughing up ball at least 3 times and an unnecessarily high penalty count. On top of this there was only one visit to Salem's half for all of 30 seconds.
On the second visit backchat wasted the opportunity and the quality boot of the Salem 10 punished the misdemeanour penning Malton back in their own half.
It took Malton 25 minutes to settle and on their 3rd trip to Salem's half forced the hosts into giving 3 penalties on the trot and a team yellow for their no10. Several scrums later the ball was fed to Will Bell who jinked over for 5 points only on 30 minutes.
Six minutes later a superb catch at the tail of the line out by Tom Lowry set up position and on the 2nd phase James Bulmer dummied once and trotted over for a 7 pointer.
With their tails up deep into extra time following a 2nd Salem yellow Lowry scored a converted try to put Malton in the driving seat at half time 19-5 to the good.
However as so often happens in cup games, Salem 15 league places below Malton came out for the second half with nothing to lose.
On 45 minutes Bell scored his 2nd try to open the gap to 19 points. Now Salem replied with 2 converted tries through their numbers 5 and 14 to close the gap to 5 points and all to play for. In the meanwhile they lost their playmaker at 10 to a 2nd yellow for a trip offence that ended his afternoon with an early bath.
The second of the above tries came from a ludicrous attacking line out call on Salem's 20 metre line that sailed over the top and was gobbled up by Salem to work a try for their winger who waltzed down the touch line past several would be tacklers fully 45 metres.
Malton had some more attacking chances but a plethora of simple mistakes such as dropping the ball in the tackle wasted any opportunities.
However on 70 minutes the backs collected themselves together and set up Bell for his hat-trick, as good a one as I have seen in quite a while. This brought the score to 29-19 with 10 minutes left on the clock, time for some game management!
Salem had other ideas and on 75 minutes closed the gap to 3 points with a 7 pointer from their no6. Two minutes later Malton replied with 5 points from a simple run in by winger Chris Joe. Deep into extra time Salem kept alive their chances of a steal by scoring 5 points only through their other flanker but it was not to be.
Malton would only have had themselves to blame had they lost this encounter against a Salem side who had played 50 minutes in total with 14 men on the park! The reward for today is a semi final at our old friends and rivals Bridlington on February 22nd.
Re grouping is the order of the day and addressing the basics of tackling, catching, decision making, and discipline, a must before the trip to Durham next week. As memory serves me a 14 man Malton triumphed by 2 points in the final minutes at home in early October.
Malton: Will Bell, Max Wainwright, Ben Tenge, Vus Dyantjies(c), Chris Joe, James Bulmer, Paul Angus, Liam Vaughan, Bailey Lamb, Rob Featherstone, Jack Hobbs, Will Dunn, Tom Lowry, Charlie Read, Matt Bowman.
Subs: Tom Barker, John Lumley, Nick Salisbury, (all used).
Scorers: Will Bell 3tries, James Bulmer 1 try, Tom Lowry 1try, Chris Joe 1 try, Paul Angus 2 cons.
Malton & Norton 2s 19 - 24 Rowntrees
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