Hayton's View - 'Fagin Fylde' pick our pockets... (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Hayton's View - 'Fagin Fylde' pick our pockets...

10:33am Saturday 8th November 2008 in Sport By Gazette Sports

KENDAL’S Director rugby Chris Hayton gives his weekly view.

THREE points away at Fylde - why does everybody who was there on Saturday feel that we had our pocket picked?

The simple answer is that we could and should have come away with five.

For an hour of that match we outplayed Fylde with a match plan to attack them in their own perceived strong area, i.e. their back line, and we succeeded.

Four tries - a bonus point in the bag - and we were 24-9 up with ten minutes to play.

Vintage Voortman (two tries), blistering Boyd (one superb finish) and a Butler blast finished off a well-rounded attack.

Fylde manufactured openings but our hard-working defence kept them out. They looked in deeper trouble when Darren Clarke, their tight-head prop was dismissed, but they were not going to give up.

A mistake at the kick-off deep in injury time gifted them the ball and we were forced on to the back foot.

They kept the ball and the game alive for a two-minute spell and forced a score in the corner.

‘Fagin Fylde’ had pinched it at the death. Not many sides will get points at Fylde and if they beef up their front five they will have a side to win the league.

This Saturday sees the return of Halifax and our main enemy here will be over-confidence.

In the cup we scored 63 points but that was the cup.

Halifax are fighting for survival and last week they drew with Macclesfield who were second in the league.

They had a try disallowed in the second half, which would have given them a much-needed victory, so we cannot allow them to get ahead.

Their main threat comes from wingman Ollie Marns, who once again got both their tries last week, but they have a robust pack which will win them the ball. If we can get ahead and then zip up our pockets we should be there.