Tykes Dent the Halo...

By Kevin Jones
August 28 2006

The drive down the M1 wasn’t something I was looking forward to, but hey the roadworks at Sheffield had disappeared so things were looking up. Maybe the last pre-season friendly at Franklins Gardens might not turn out all that bad after all!!

As this was my first visit to Northampton, having lived in the vicinity for nearly 40 years before moving to gods country, I was mightily impressed by the ground and the friendliness of the supporters; or was it because I sounded strangely local but thought what was I doing in a Tykes top? I was quietly confident that we would put up a good fight until I saw the Saints team for the evenings run out: Reihana, Lamont, Quinlan, Cohen, Spencer and Thompson - had they forgotten it was a pre-season friendly and that the season actually starts a week later when they face the Falcons? Surely Leeds would not warrant a strong side such as this? As it was - they did!!

The game itself was flat with little sparkle although this was not helped by Roy "I like the sound of my whistle" Maybank. By quarter of an hour I really wanted to shove it where the sun didn’t shine.

The Tykes had a great start converting a penalty within two minutes, but at the restart our defence looked nervous and a little shaky with the ball being dropped. This led to King Carlos punishing us with a sublime cross field kick into the hands of Reihana to cross for a try, but he hit the post on the conversion so after five minutes it was 5-3.

Spencer again took the opportunity in the 13th minute to take advantage of some poor defence to kick across field again for Ben Cohen to cross and this time Reihana converted, 12-3.

3 minutes later, after a scrappy re-start, Hinton was gifted a penalty but this time it was the Tykes who rued the miss as it bounced off the post.

By this time it was becoming apparent what the ref had in store for us all, too many stops for infringements that really could have been let go altogether; the game stuttered from start to finish and to make Maybank's day he sin binned Schusterman after some fraught defending by the Tykes.

Now we were down to 14, the Saints must have thought it was Christmas, no such luck although they were camped on our line for what seemed like an eternity. At last! Half time and no points conceded with the sin binning. The Tykes defended their heart out but isn’t that what we do best?

The second half led to a penalty on the 42nd minute to the Tykes but fell short of going over. Hoops and Cohen had a few slaps at each other, but the majority of the half saw the Saints again camped out on our line. The 67th minute saw a superb move by the Saints which saw them going over the whitewash but was disallowed for the ball going forward, so still 12-3. Looking good by now, the crowd was becoming rather anxious. I really think they were expecting a walk over of more then 30 points.

The last 20 minutes saw the rain come down and players were losing their footing, by the 80th minute it looked a very credible score line until in the 83rd minute, after some very scrappy defending and a few punches, the saints crossed and converted to finish 19-3.

To summarise: 19-3 is still a very credible result for the Tykes and to be honest I think we were the winners on Friday. After all, they are a new team still gelling and finding their feet up against a very strong experienced pack full of internationals.

The scrums especially impressed me: strong and solid, they held their own without giving ground, but ball seemed a little slow coming out and on a number of occasions we gave possession away.

The lineouts were okay better than last season as was the kicking into touch; at least we did find touch unlike last year.

Open play looked good when we had the opportunity. Saints closed us down a bit too quick on a number of occasions. In the ruck we gave away too turnovers.

Cusack had a good game, as did Rauluni who threatened the Saints on the break as did Hinton, Holtby and Vasey who kicked through for Tuilagi for a try had the ball not bounced the wrong way.

Am I looking forward to Sunday and the start of the campaign? A BIG definite yes if Friday was anything to go by. Yes we still have areas to improve on but it will come, the more we play the better they will become. Nerves need settling that showed in the first 15 minutes but you can see that this is a team that wants to play, wants to compete and above all wants to win!