Not for the first time this year the Beverley Braves under 12s started slowly and gave themselves too much to do to get the result against West Hull. After falling behind 12 nil after just seven minutes the Braves started to play, matching Wests in the second half for points but eventually losing out 8-16 at Longcroft.
With the team suffering from unavailability due to holidays, the Braves had three players making their first appearance of the season, and one of these three, Matthew Brown, was making his first ever appearance.
This meant the basic 13 with Brown, who had a steady debut when he was on the pitch, being the only substitute. Two defensive lapses, one on the back of a knock inside their own half had the Braves trailing by that 12 nil score-line. They know they are a better team than that and once they clicked Beverley began to cause Wests some problems. On the back of great go forward from the terrible twosome Henry Hughes and George Bennett-Teare the Braves began to get some good field position.
West Hull were up very quickly at the scrums and play the ball, sometimes too quickly resulting in several penalties, which meant hooker Jack Turner had a difficult time getting the ball away. This in turn meant half-backs Lewis Egan and Marcus Walker also had less time on the ball but still managed to get Hughes and Bennett-Teare the ball to do some damage, ably supported by the two Ollies in the second row, Loney and Gresswell, who both also put in the usual big effort in defence alongside Egan – the sort of work-rate that often goes unnoticed.
With a bit more possession Beverley finally got some points on the board when Walker, who had his best kicking game of the season, floated a cross field kick to the left for Will Wallis to leap, pluck the ball out of the air and score his fifth try of the season. Walker’s conversion attempt hit the post making it 4-12 at half-time.
Except for Wallis’ strong runs, often out of defence, the Braves three quarters limited opportunities in attack, but more than made up for this in defence. Centre Ryan Deane and his wing Tom Newton combined several times to make the tackle or force the error as Wests tried to play an expansive game despite the damp conditions. On the opposite wing, Harry Newton came up with a brave one-on-one tackle to save a certain try whilst Wallis chased back well to not only bring down the breakaway West Hull forward but also to force the knock on in doing so – Josh Charnley could not have done better. At the back, Dylan English pulled off some vital tackles and picked up some work up front when his forwards began to tire.
West Hull’s pressure finally told when they attacked their left and with Wallis momentarily off the field, they found the Braves defence short to score the try – but too far out to add the extras. At 4-16 and time running out the game was in the bag for Wests now but a great feature of this year’s 12s is that they never give up. Walker’s short kick-off got them possession back and after more drives from Hughes, Loney and man of the match, Bennett-Teare got them into the left-hand corner, a cheeky scoot from Turner from acting half-back got the score they deserved. It was too far out for Turner to improve leaving the score a respectable 8-16, but with the Braves wondering what might have been had it not been for that slow start.
