Clitheroe Undone at Pendle

It was another afternoon of toil and graft for Clitheroe’s rugby men last Saturday. A trip over the hill to Pendle RFC in Nelson on a pleasantly sunny spring afternoon was sure to get the juices flowing, wasn’t it?

But once again the selectors had to ponder the not unusual problem of players being unavailable for selection.

So after an encouraging performance in adversity against the league leaders the previous week, changes were forced upon the team. With the likes of Will Jones, Sam Thornber, Greg Birch, Kieron Keough and Nathan Peel – all declining the trip for one reason or another. In came Jim Smith, Richard Few, Darren Eagle and the evergreen Dave Watson took on the Captains armband.

With three forwards on the bench Clitheroe would have to play a fairly tightish game to gain any purchase in the game.

Centre Chris Waddington was delayed in traffic forcing an immediate re jig of resources – Darren Eagle moving from the back row to centre and Steve Dowson coming on into the pack.

Clitheroe tried to take the game to Pendle up front and hopefully negate their tricky backline of much good ball.
However, although the tight phases went mainly with the head and feed and perhaps Clitheroe just and so shaded the line outs, hanging onto the ball at the breakdown was the Littlemoor mens Achilles heel. Pendle played to the whistle beautifully and Clitheroe were just not accurate or ruthless enough at the ruck area. Pendle were able to extract too many penalties
against Clitheroe to enable them to gain the momentum required.

As it was, most of the first half was played out in the middle third of the pitch with neither team able to break the deadlock.

Alas a couple of half breaks were ably supported by the Pendle back row to put them over for two tries before the interval.
Back to basics was the call at the huddle, but confidence was still high of good result.

Unhappily the second period started with Clitheroe conceding another try to rock them back under the posts. The Pendle kicker, to rub salt in, had a fine afternoon with a 100% kicking rate.

Clitheroe rallied for the next twenty minutes and laid siege to the Pendle line. It wasn’t pretty but it proved effective, after a protracted series of close quarter pick and drives, scrum half Dan Smith spotted a yawning gap and was through for a good try.
That was about as good as it got for the maroons. And as tired legs took their toll Pendle were able to grab a couple more tries before the final whistle.

No shortage of endeavour for Clitheroe, but with too many new faces in the squad who found it difficult to adapt to the system of play worked at on the training paddock, it was hard to get any attacks going against a well drilled defence.

Credit must go for a few stand out players; stand in Skipper Dave Watson led the side gallantly, Richard Few, although under used on the wing, looked dangerous whenever the ball came his way. Steve Dowson [pic] had a tremendous cameo making the hard yards and Darren Eagle, who played two positions with equal aplomb, was excellent value – showing the virtue of basic skills, accuracy and fitness. What else would expect from a Kiwi?

No 1st XV game this week, but the 2nd XV entertain Chorley at Littlemoor. Ko 3pm.