No Room for Manoeuvre.

As Kersal’s first match in three weeks following previous cancellation due to snow, this was possibly going to be a tough game to get into against mid table club Sheffield WRFC, currently 17 points ahead of the home side.

From kick off this was a tight game. Both teams presented a close knit defence leaving little room for penetration. Dominating Kersal’s half between the halfway and twenty two for most of the first forty minutes, the visiting side rucked well and supplied clean ball to their back line. Subsequent phases of play were however disrupted under continual defensive pressure by Kersal’s forward and back line defence. Julie Stansfield, a past captain of Kersal and gracing the home side with a momentary return from retirement at outside centre, undertook some powerful tackling along with Atherton, Hewson and Keeling, who had her work cut out debuting at scrum half. By the 39^th minute, the visiting side had little choice than to opt for points as the full back kicked the first of three penalty conversions that unsuccessfully bounced off the AK post. The first half ended with a nil score for either side. As Joe Brown, the touch judge commented, this was “a game of attrition”.

The second half saw an equal division of ball possession and positioning between teams  with Kersal leading at the start. Progressively worsening weather caused the ball to be slippy in hand and resulted in a collection of knock-ons by both sides. Changes saw Brown to outside centre, Stansfield to number eight, Keeling to flanker and O’Kelly brought on at scrum half after injury to captain Goatman in the first twenty minutes of the game. Pleasingly Kersal did not buckle under this loss. Both back lines tried to create play but neither progressed further than ten metres with each brake. Kersal’s employ of a kick and chase game in this half gained greater ground but again defence was tight. Sheffield began to step up in the 25th minute and again if not for a strong communicative Kersal defense which saw two tries being held up by O’Kelley and others, the even score would have been broken. A further two missed penalty conversions by the visiting full back again demonstrated the desperation of Sheffield to score but the day ended 0-0 with Kersal looking the better team from the side line.