After a couple of heavy defeats Beverley 2nds recorded a morale boosting victory against a experienced Scunthorpe 4th team after original opponents Cleethorpes called off on Friday morning.
A week after struggling to field a forward pack Beverley welcomed back influential number 8 Rob Vaux after work commitments and also saw the return of two injured first team players Martin Shaw and Robert Todd. Todd badly broke his arm in the first league game of the season, so it’s been a long road back but together with Shaw and Vaux added some much needed aggression and experience to the Beavers eight.
Beverley needed to show more urgency in defence than they had in previous weeks and did so from the off and pressured Scunthorpe into a mistake from the kick off. It soon became clear that Scunthorpe would rely on their big pack to drag Beverley into a forward orientated battle, something Beverley wanted to avoid and play quick expansive rugby if possible.
This seemed to be on the cards, as five minutes in from a attacking scrum on the Scunthorpe 22 a planned moved that had been worked on at training brought the first score. Number eight Vaux broke blind from the scrum and fed veteran scrum half Andy Ellis who drew the defence in and put winger John Newton away down the wing for his first try of the season. Fly half Ben Sherwood was just wide with the conversion attempt.
Beverley continued to press and only silly errors and lack of concentration allowed Scunthorpe to bring play into the Beverley half without ever really threatening the try line.
Twenty five minutes in and another set piece move brought the second Beverley Try. A line out on 22 was won cleanly and the ball was whipped out to Sherwood who slipped the ball to the looping Ellis to hit Vaux on a storming run to the posts for a try which Sherwood duly converted.
At 12 nil Beverley should have taken the game away from Scunthorpe but suddenly seemed to take their foot of the pedal. This allowed the visitors to gain a foothold in the game and their experienced forwards drove continually towards the Beverley line, only occasionally releasing their backs whose attacks were soon snuffed out by the excellent defence from the Beverley backs.
Just before half time, from a seemingly comfortable position on their own five metre line a poor pass was only half cleared and what followed could have been described as a comedy of errors which resulted in Scunthorpe’s centre out jumping the Beverley defence and landing over the try line for a converted score.
The second half was pretty poor fare. The constant rain had made handling difficult and there was no real flow to the game as the referee seemingly blew almost non stop for the remaining 40 minutes. Infact the only notable action was the issuing of one red card to the Scunthorpe number eight for stamping on the Beavers Skipper Charlton who left the pitch injured following the incident and two yellows to Beverley Gavin Jenney and Anthony Spence.
Despite the weather Beverley did try and play some rugby and went close on a couple of occasions with Sherwood being held up over the line and the impressive James Graham, whose lines of running caused problems all afternoon for the visitors, failed to hold onto a short pass from the fly half with the line begging. Full Time Beverly 12 Scunthorpe 7.
All round it was a much improved performance especially in defence and the work rate was much higher than in previous weeks. There were also encouraging returns from injury by Shaw and Todd who should be pushing for 1st team places in the coming weeks, as well as Vaux who is a handful for opponents with his barnstorming runs and big defence.
Greater tests await the 2nds and more hard work is needed if they are to register further victories during the run in to the end of the season starting at Bridlington on Saturday.
Beverley 2nds 12 – Scunthopre 4ths 7
