Fleetwood Fleeced!

The game was played in interesting weather conditions which featured a freezing hailstorm with sleet in the second half. It is quite an unnerving prospect to think that some hardy souls will be attempting to play cricket next week!

Wigton started brightly with the first points coming from a Gregg Smith penalty. The general, pattern of the first half was for Fleetwood to try and keep the ball fairly close and try to break through the Wigton defence. Sometimes they got past the first tackler, but the cover defence usually was there to snuff out the danger. Wigton's beat attacks came fro turnover ball which was quickly moved away from the point of contact to our more threatening backs.

The first try scoring opportunity came when centre Richard Moffatt pounced on a loose ball and drove forward. As it reached fly half David Hanabury he spotted the defence coming up quickly and prodded the ball behind where cover was thin. Unfortunately Gregg Smith did not get the luck of the bounce and the ball refused to stick in his hands.

Fleetwood soon countered when their most dangerous player, scrum half Scott Richardson, took a quick penalty tap and made 50 yards deep into Wigton territory. This lead to a second, kickable penalty, but Richardson was unable to take the chance to equalise.

Wigton's opening try came after further good work by Moffatt who carried strongly over the gain line. Quick hands saw the ball moved left to Hanabury, then Smith and then winger Aron Henderson. He did wonderfully well to drop the ball back into Smith's hands out of a strong tackle. Smith had a clear thirty yard run to the line for a try which he converted to make the score 10-0.

Smith, looking close to his best form next produced a terrific kick to take play from the home 22 to the visitor's 22. As Fleetwood tried to attack from deep, Moffatt once again claimed a loose ball and drove forward. From the base of the ruck, scrum half Andy Brown saw that there were no defenders covering deep and chipped over the top. The well-weighted kick bounced tantalising over the head of Hanabury, but it was collected by centre Steven Harris as he followed up to score a simple, unconverted try, making the score 15-0.

As Wigton failed to deal with the restart, Fleetwood were awarded a penalty which gave them a lineout deep in Wigton's 22. The attempted drive was stopped and Wigton were awarded the put in to the scrum. However, Fleetwood's wheel had been a problem for much of the half and they disrupted Wigton's possession and came up with the ball. This drive was stopped at the expense of a penalty and referee Martin Maughan issued a clear warning to the defenders. Fleetwood used a familiar Wigton tactic from recent years, taking a tap to set up a driving maul. Illegal play by Wigton failed to prevent the pack crashing over for a try and to make matters worse, hooker Richard Jackson was yellow carded.

At 15-5 Wigton were not handicapped by the loss of a player, scoring straight from the restart. Smith fielded the ball and set off upfield with some neat interplay with Henderson. For a resulting ruck, the ball was moved to Hanabury. One of his favourite sights is a disorganised defence in front of him.....not that it even needs to be too disorganised. He produced a virtuoso gem of a try, sidestepping and jinking round six or seven would be tacklers who failed to work out where he had gone and then dotting the ball over the line. If a try like that had been scored on TV we would be seeing countless replays for months. Smith converted to make it 22-5.

The spectators did not have long to wait for the next score. This time strong carries from the restart by second row Robert Marrs and tyro flanker Ralph Johnston made the initial inroads. Hanabury's pass put Moffatt outside his marker to get behind the defence. The ball went to Harris who dummies and stepped inside to score another excellent try. Smith again converted, giving a 29-5 score at half time.

The second half saw Fleetwood with a lot of possession but most of it was well in their own half and they struggled to provide a potent threat to the home defence until the final minutes of the match. On the other hand, Wigton found the visitors themselves had tightened up defensively and strangely found it harder to penetrate than they had from much deeper positions in the first half.

To compound the problems for Fleetwood, the weather worsened in the second half and they found themselves battling into sleet and hailstones. This lead them to eschew kicks as a way of making progress, as even penalty kicks to touch struggled to make yards.

The scrums were a strange mixture: on their own ball Wigton were sometimes disrupted by Fleetwood's wheel, but on the opposition put in, Wigton started to exert some pressure. Another strange feature was that in a game where, from the sidelines, there seemed little untoward going on, the referee saw fit to call the captains together three times. These pauses in play did not go down well with the backs as they seemed to struggling to fight off hypothermia.

Although Wigton had some possession in the visitors' 22, little came of it, and when a penalty came along, Wigton were happy for Smith to nudge the lead out to 32-5.

Few begrudge Fleetwood the last say in the game. Fly half Paul Bamber, moving into the scrum half position, finally unlocked the defence with a neatly executed reverse back handed pass to allow his pack to finally run into the Wigton 22. Wigton were forced to concede a penalty on the five metre line. Another quick tap saw Bradley Stapleton score on the left hand side of the field. Richardson converted for a final score of 39-12.

Wigton will be satisfied with this end to their home season which saw some very attractive tries scored. When we are able to get our best team on the field we are a match for anyone at this level. The team has a very young look to it, but quite a lot of young players have made good progress this season and have started to fit the bill as genuine first teamers.

Finally, last week reference was made to three sets of brothers playing last week, namely the Johnstons, the Hendersons and the Couzens. (An interesting conversation was had trying to explain that the Couzens were in fact brothers and not cousins). It was suggested that this could be the first time such a thing has happened. Maybe, maybe not. This is a strong possibility that in the late sixties/early seventies, we could have had Allisons (Cyril and Lenny), Bells (Kenny and Billy, maybe Bobbie and Graham's (George and Raymond and maybe Howard) all in the same team. Add to this era a possibility of Eddie and Malcolm Hutton being in the mix as well. Going back to the early sixties we could have had Allisons, Bells and Pearsons (Michael and David) playing together. Finally, in the nineties we had the Thompsons (David and Mark), the Armstrongs (Mike and John) and the Irvings (Mark, Raymond and Tony). Whether we ever had all three sets on the field at the same time I don't know, but the possibility is there. Thomps was unable to shed light on the situation; he spent most of the time with his head stuck in a scrum and didn't much notice who else was on the pitch.