Lymm 26

Kendal 11

National League Three North

WEAK tackling in the second half let Kendal down as they failed to capitalise on their victory over West Hartlepool a week last Saturday with defeat at Lymm at the weekend.

The opening exchanges were even, with the Lymm backs looking confident with ball in hand, while the Kendal pack made good ground whenever they had control of the ball.

After 10 minutes punches were exchanged with a number of Kendal players including Reece Thomlinson and Rob Quarry and Lymm flanker Tim Oakes, with Quarry’s game finished after he lost some teeth. Referee Geoff Smith chose to take no action.

Kendal opened the scoring after a quarter of an hour with a penalty from Chris Park from in front of the posts following a series of drives by the pack from a line out, and when the ball was spread wide, the Lymm defence was caught offside.

The hard work of the Kendal forwards was being wasted with poor kicking, giving the ball back to the Lymm back division to mount repeated attacks, putting pressure on the Kendal defence.

With 10 minutes of the half to go Kendal withstood a number of attacks on their line by the Lymm forwards, with one move stopped on the line when Liam Hayton prevented the ball from being grounded.

At the end of the first time, Lymm second row and captain Olli Higginson was sin binned, moments after the referee had issued a general warning, but Kendal were unable to make the extra man advantage count.

Lymm came out for the second half fired up, and another poor Kendal kick from defence gave Lymm the ball. After they stretched the Kendal defence, prop Jordan Widington squeezed over in the corner to put Lymm 5-3 in front despite a question mark over the grounding of the ball.

Five minutes later Lymm extended their lead. Substitute Tom Darbyshire broke a number of tackles to set up a try and left wing Cormack Nolan converted to make it 12-3.

Chris Park reduced the lead after 15 minutes with another penalty to reduce their arrears to six points and with 15 minutes to go, the Black and Ambers made it game on.

Lymm were on the attack deep in the Kendal 22, and a further Lymm try looked inevitable, only for Kendal right wing Jamie Postlethwaite to intercept a pass. Despite the attempts of Lymm players to catch him, he went the length of the field to score in the corner as Kendal made it 12-11.

But with 10 minutes to go, further weak Kendal tackling saw them concede two quick tries. Firstly Lymm second row Olli Higginson made a long break to set up a try in the left corner, with Nolan putting over an excellent conversion to extend the home side’s lead to 19-11.

A poor restart kick was run back, and Lymm hooker Pete Allan evaded numerous attempted tackles to score with Nolan converting as Lymm wrapped the game up with a 26-11 win.

Both teams had chances to score in the final 10 minutes, but the game ended with a scoreline which did not reflect the Kendal efforts, but it was a testament to the errors they made in the game.

Kendal

Alistair Livesey, Duncan Green, Richard Harryman, Liam Hayton (c), Reece Tomlinson (Ben Leacock), Dan Greenwood, Garry Holmes, Rob Quarry (Dan White), Simon Davidson, Chris Park, Jamie Postlethwaite, Jason Poleman, Dini Noyo, Alistair Thompson, Dan Lowther (Simon Mulholland)

Lymm

Nick Ashton, Pete Allan, Jordan Widdrington, Sion Williams, Olli Higginson, Tim Oakes, Sam Mullarkey, Adam Bray, Tom Baker, Tom Bray, Cormack Nolan, Nathan Fernyhough, Dave Williamson, Richard McEvoy, Joe Knowles

Referee: Geoff Smith