A day to forget. Beverley were given a comprehensive going over here by a Billingham side playing with far greater verve and efficiency. It was comfortably Beverley’s poorest display of the season. On their day they are a match for any side in the league but this was not one of those days. Oddly enough up front Beverley won practically all the forward exchanges. Indeed the longer the game went on the more likely it became that any Beverley scoring was going to come from their forwards. And so it proved.
Billingham showed from the outset their intent to run the ball. They moved it quickly and kept it simple, something the Beverley backline seemed incapable of doing. Billingham would have scored within the first few minutes had they not knocked on five metres out. Soon afterwards they did take the lead with a converted try which, like most of their scores, originated from a Beverley error. Beverley, over elaborating in the home 22, lost the ball and Billingham burst away for fly half Peter Evans to touch down.
The home backs were finding an alarming number of gaps in a leaky Beverley midfield. Beverley’s normally reliable defence was poor today and Billingham looked capable of scoring whenever they attacked with ball in hand. Luke Watson their fullback broke through in midfield and touched down for a second converted try. Phil Duboulay responded with a penalty when Billingham were caught offside in front of the posts but ten minutes before halftime Billingham went 21-3 up. Evans broke through on his own ten metre line, chipped ahead, and scooped the ball up to run in a third converted try.
If Beverley were to get anything from this game they needed a transformation after the break. And for twenty minutes they produced it. They had nearly all the play due mainly to the hard work of their forwards. From a penalty line-out the pack drove over and Joe Pickets touched down for a try which Duboulay converted from the touchline. Two more tries and a conversion were now needed to take the lead. It looked odds on that they would get them as they attacked the home line with renewed vigour. James Holland and Pickets were rampant and Billingham could find no answer to the controlled drives of the Beverley forwards.
But Billingham somehow weathered the storm, even with a man in the sin-bin, and the spell of sustained Beverley pressure brought no reward. Billingham’s kicking out of hand was mostly far superior to Beverley’s and they eventually cleared their lines with a long raking kick which took them into Beverley’s half. Beverley lost the resulting line-out on their own throw and Evans with another chip and chase raced through to touch down and stretch the lead to 28-10. A minute later it got worse when a wild attempted miss-pass in the centre went straight to Billingham centre Will Turnbull who cruised over for a fifth converted try. Any lingering hopes Beverley might still have had of victory were gone.
To their credit the Beverley pack stuck at it. Pickets got over for a second try after another impressive drive to the line and in the dying minutes Sam Kerry touched down for a third, again superbly converted by Duboulay from wide out. At 35-22 a couple of bonus points were still within Beverley’s grasp if they could find one more converted try. They almost did. Richard Bussey and Pickets very nearly got there and when Holland with the last play of the game did get over from a tapped penalty he was adjudged to have made a double move in touching down.
Beverley could perhaps point to their being without several senior players including two of their key backs, but this could hardly account for such a wholly disappointing afternoon, especially outside the scrum where they looked ponderous and lacked penetration. It is to be hoped that we do not have too many more days like this.
Final Score : Billingham 35 Beverley RUFC 22 | Reported by John Nursey
