A gutsy reverse for the cavaliers.

A gutsy reverse for the cavaliers.

The team were riding high and in good spirits despite the absence of several stalwarts expectations were high.

It shows high far this side and club have come that the twos were gunning for another win.

The game kicked off and the twos worked up pitch and were awarded a penalty which was immediately converted by Garth Spencer[pic]. Leigh fought back and showed why they had compiled some good victories of their own this season and scored a good try in response following some strong running from their big runners. The extras were added.

The next 65 minutes are hard to explain. Initially Clitheroe struggled a little at the set piece with yours truly guilty of a not straight throws and then losing a scrum on against the head disrupting promising positions. The Clitheroe defence remained as solid as previous weeks and Leigh struggled to make much yardage or hold onto possession.

As the half continued the pack sorted out the set piece and began to dominate the game, they couldn't however produce clean ball. We didn't deal with the lazy tackles or the fringe ruckers, ordinarily something that can get you into trouble but when they don't you have to adapt your game.

To be fair to the cavaliers they did change it up at half time and absolutely dominated the second half in a manner that the team can be proud of but we didn't convert pressure into points.

There were some fine individual performances debutante John Bank made a nuisance of himself, Ben Tennant continued to develop his all round game the wombats ran and tackled hard. Dan Jones looked to have maintained his end of season form until a blood injury forced an hour's break. Rick Edmondson showed his versatility by slotting in all over the pack. The three quarters looked constantly dangerous and I genuinely thought we were going to score on at least half dozen times only to see us denied by an unnecessarily forced pass or a lost ditch finger tip tackle.

Sadly we couldn't quite put it all together, yes Leigh were helped to slow the pace of the game down but ultimately this game was there to be won for long periods and we didn't convert.

Dave Watson had a really good game at scrum half as he dealt with the defensive efforts of Leigh effectively earning himself the man of the match award.

This result shows that its decision time for this group of players they have demonstrated the ability to win a run of games but today required a little more cohesion to unlock a good defence, that cohesion only comes from training together as well as playing together.

Overall another superb effort and on another day we would have won comfortably but sadly not today. Let's hope that Kirk and his away team survived their away mission this week and return in good health. After all next week represents an opportunity to keep the cavaliers boldly going where they have never been before the third round of a Cup competition.

Report by WRJ