RUGBY: Newbold's well organised defence key to beating leaders

PICTURES BY MIKE BAKER

Midlands 1 West

Newbold on Avon 13 Kenilworth 8

Newbold returned to action after an enforced week’s break due to waterlogged pitches to play the league leaders, writes Phil Fereday.

The game followed the Vice Presidents dinner and the Bold served up some tasty afters for the large crowd to enjoy. The game kicked off with Newbold having No 8 Sam Thompson returning from injury and straight away the Bold were on the attack, testing the visitors’ defence first with the forwards pick and go and then the backs swiftly moving the ball along the line.

After seven minutes player coach Huw Thomas made a clean break on the half way line and found Wes Hallam in support, who in turn passed the ball on to Kyle Furlong to round off the move to score in between the posts. Dan O’Brien converted.

On 22 minutes, after a period of determined defence the Bold broke out and pressed for a score. This came by means of an O’Brien penalty, 10-0 .

Newbold were by no means having it all their own way but the league leaders could not break down the home side defence and another O’Brien penalty made it 13-0.

The second half followed a similar pattern, as the Bold battered away at Kenilworth’s line with strong carries from Rudi Reid, Ben Dawes and Stu Houghton. Kenilworth came back with well taken penalty for 13-3 and just when it seemed that neither side would cross the line again Kenilworth broke through to score a converted try.

The rest of the game was played out in the centre of the pitch with both sides defences holding out.

In the end it was Newbold’s well organised defence that proved to be the winning factor. Coach Huw Thomas praised the players and said the hard work in training was paying dividends throughout all the teams in the club.