Once again Clitheroe came away, from a undeniably winnable fixture, with nothing in the bank but a series of ‘what might have been’s’.
After a couple of weeks off due to frost and snow, this quickly rescheduled fixture seemed to have caught a number of the Clitheroe players napping. The selection committee had to spread their net a little wider than usual, drawing on the experience of former skippers’ Ollie McEntyre and Andrew Thornber in the forwards and Dave Watson returning at fly half. With the current Club Captain Nathan Peel enjoying the delights of Twickenham, lock forward Ross Chamberlain donned the skippers armband and immediately he was on the back foot after losing the toss.
Playing up the slope on what can be best described as soft going, Clitheroe spent the majority of the half in possession of the ball, but not as much in territory. In fact they were probably guilty of playing a little bit too much rugby in their own half at times, when a long touch finder to move the team upfield may have paid dividends.
Especially when they were doing quite well at line out time; reasonably secure on their own throw and disrupting and stealing many of the oppositions ball, veteran Andrew Rigby leaping like spring salmon and McEntyre hoovering up any overthrows at the back.
In the back line Stuart Railton [pic], who had a fine game, and Chris Waddington were combining well and went through their whole repertoire of training ground playbook moves, which although looked impressive from the sidelines, the Chorley defence was equally up to the task.
A stalemate 0-0 at the interval was a little frustrating for the visitors after having the bulk of the play and indeed playing most of the football on show.
In such a nip and tuck affair it would probably be the side that made the most mistakes that would suffer. Unfortunately that side was in maroon and gold: a series of blunders straight from the restart put Chorley within range of the line and a slip in the cover and the try was awarded.
As if this was not bad enough a penalty kick shortly afterwards left Clitheroe with a lot of work to do.
But they knuckled down, rolled up their sleeves and got on with the task in hand. Almost all the remaining match was then played in the Chorley half and much of it in the opposition 22, where Clitheroe launched wave of attacks but just couldn’t penetrate the well marshalled home defence.
On another day a string of penalties in their favour, may have brought greater rewards and as the final whistle went they were still plugging away at the line.
Their fantastic work rate and attitude will surely bring with it some victories before the season is out; they just need a bit more accuracy and variation in attack and the results will come.
This weekend Clitheroe welcome old friends Carnforth to Littlemoor [2.15ko]. After a 20-20 draw in October at Carnforth it should be an exciting match up.