Wigton denied by last gasp try

The pitch was in pretty good condition with a strong wind blowing across the pitch. Wigton started confidently with plenty of possession and playing some good rugby, but all just too far away from the red zone, meaning all promising play eventually resulted with a dropped ball or players being guilty of holding on.

The penalties allowed Hawcoat Park to kick 40 meters upfield to safety on several occasions. Wannop, Johnston & Bell were making life difficult for the opposition in the scrums whilst Nuts and Josh Nicholson were denied the hosts any possession from the lineout. However as Wigton failed to capitalise on their opportunities, Hawcoat Park pressed forward and following a scrum on the 10 metre line, scored a try in the corner, giving them an underserved 5-0 half time lead.

Wigton started the second half the better team and from a quick tap, the ball was moved along the line. Ferg, Bomber, Miller, Nuts and Matthew Harrison all contributed to the touch down in the corner. Elliot Armstrong kicked a very difficult conversion between the posts to give Wigton a 7-5 lead at 48 minutes.

As the game progressed, Hawcoat Park were applying more pressure although good defensive work kept the hosts at bay. The last 10 minutes were played inside the Wigton 22 and a series of frustrating decisions by the referee saw the home team creep towards the Wigton line. The pressure eventually became too much as the the hosts found a gap to score on the line and win the match 10-7 just before the final whistle.

Wigton will be disappointed to lose this game and will rue too many first half chances which were spurned. The hosts came back into the game right at the end, and took their chances to seal a closely fought contest.

Note from Coach Andrew 'Nuts' Brown.

After an extremely competitive 1st half to the season, this last result see's Wigton sitting 3rd in the league. No doubt the team that traveled to the south of the county will be disappointed from the result, but also the lack of available players for a game that we knew was going to be hard fought.

On a plus side the last 13 games have shown me that players like Armstrong, Trow, Nicholson, Johnston, Bomber and Fergus not only have a strong work ethic but a passion to play rugby, win and commit to training and the whole team ethos.