Rugby St Andrews v Deepings

(Above) Man of the Match, Ryan Orchard,

On a fine day for running rugby, Rugby St Andrews came out the victors in an exciting and gritty match.
Deepings are still very much in a transitional stage with new and young players being integrated into the IXV and this showed in the first twenty minutes. St Andrews had a game plan of large runners and then to go wide which created two tries early on.
The lesson was that in this league, you cannot start slowly! Two penalties is all that the Deepings team could muster in the first half before a dubious piece of refereeing allowed an American football style pass to go unseen and St Andrews to score (the referee having being bowled over on to the floor!).
This clearly rallied the Deepings players and at 22-6 down, the ball stayed in hand, the rucking became more intense and Ryan Orchard showed that you don’t need to be old and fat to prop to rage like a bull!
Soon this caused the St Andrews forwards to lose control mentally and they started conceding penalties. These were converted and when Toby Cole stole a line out and sailed over for the score Deepings were just six points behind with ten minutes left.
But the momentum swung and Deepings conceded a penalty that Andrews converted and with two minutes remaining in went a final St Andrews try. Tempers still had time to flare up with the notorious St Andrews prop succumbing to his temper when specialist scrumiger Nobby Coupland managed to work his dark art.
A great game with the score line not reflecting the true contest.

Tries:
Toby Cole
Conversions:
David Buchan
Penalty Kicks:
David Buchan (2)
Matthew Newman
Man of the Match:
Ryan Orchard