Honours even in 10 try thriller

Heath u13s welcomed Pontefract for our first game of the season.  Last year honours were even so it promised to be a tight fixture.  Heath were near full strength and without a u12s game on the Sunday Zac Thompson, AJ Boothroyd and Ethan Carter got their debuts whilst the team was confidently captained by Logan Helliwell-MacDonald.

Ponte won the toss and choose the receive.  Within 2 mins their well organised team led by Capt Daniel were on the front foot on an open pitch finding a gap in the Heath defence to go 5-0 up.

At the restart Heath immediately responded.  The ball went out to the right wing and from 70 metres out Ethan Murphy found space down the touch line, stepped on the gas to score a great individual try. 5-5.

Ponte reacted positively to Heath’s response with two back to back tries.  5-15.  This could have led to a thrashing for Heath but the lads heads stayed high.  The scrummaging by both sides was excellent with good body positions.  Lennon Wood gave a clean feed and passed out to Sonny Gordon who tipped onto inside centre Louie Moss then Logan Hall who stepped right and drifted passed his opposite centre to find space and stormed over the line.  10-15.

With mins remaining in the first half Heath were building confidence.  This was a heavy weight bout and Ponte’s props were hammering the Heath line but the defence stayed true including great defence by Lewis Farrell and Lennon Fermoyle plus cover defence by Ethan Gill.  At a turn over the ball went out to electric fullback Alfie Cartwright who showed great strength to shrug off a would be tackler down the right to score in the corner. The whistle blew for half time.  All square 15-15.

The second half started like the first.  Ponte we’re having none of the Heath fight back and immediately got over the line.  Their inside centre Louie was cutting sublime lines off his 10 and causing havoc.  Heath found themselves 15-25 down within 5 mins.  The game started to look like it was out of reach.

With 10 min to go Heath had a scrum centre field and 40m from Ponte’s try line.  Sonny Gordon set up left of the scrum, dummied and found space to charge over like Jonny Sexton to slide over, the lads celebrated. 20-25.

With two mins to go Heath sniffed a chance to draw level.  This came from a ruck on the right when Ethan Murphy picked from the base of the ruck and went blind.  Ponte must’ve though they had caught him with an ankle tap, but Murph kept his balance and sped away to score in the corner.  25-25.

The final whistle went.  The lads shuck hands and went over the cheer on the 1st XV.  Both teams were a credit to their clubs.

Heath Man of the Match: Ethan Murphy.

Ponte Man of the Match: Inside centre Louie.