Bogged Down in Brid

After their high-octane performance last week, this was a disappointing defeat for Goole away at Bridlington in what was viewed by many of the travelling supporters to be the poorest performance of the season. With the same squad of players and just a couple of changes to the starting line-up, Goole kicked off with a strong wind in their favour and after early mid-field exchanges started to exert pressure on the home team defenders. The early pressure coming predominately from the scrum where Goole had the early upper hand, winning two scrums against the Brid put-in. Yet despite this early pressure and scrum dominance, they struggled to make headway against a solid home team defence. All too often possession was kicked away, with Bridlington the grateful recipients of the ball either in open play or from their fully functional lineout. Goole certainly had their early chances and should have scored on at least two occasions. The first chance was foiled by what the referee considered to be a deliberate knock on by the home team defender on his own try line. Strangely, the referee considered it worthy of a yellow card but not a penalty try? The second wasted scoring opportunity was the selection of a grubber kick just a few metres from the Brid try line when straight forward handling would have had a greater chance of success. Couple that with poor quality passing and the backs in particular producing none of the penetration seen in previous games as they failed to capitalise on the one-man advantage. Goole’s Rhys Moore was yellow carded as Olly Pearson went to scrum half, but the game continued to be a drab, frustrating event. Goole did finally manage a try after a laborious 22 mins of play following the only sharp passing phase of the match between Matty Lill and Sean Roberts out wide that resulted in Tom Holt going over for a try that he converted himself. 0 – 7.
The restart was dropped by Goole, and as a result the home team has a brief spell in the Goole half but nothing materialised from the possession as both teams cancelled each other out with no quality play and an element of predictability when either team had possession. Goole had options to kick at goal from awarded penalties, but, on the basis of their earlier domination, opted for scrums that despite yielding good possession produced no points. As a result of these fruitless options, a kick at goal was decided with Tom Holt extending the lead to 0 – 10 but it was left to the home team to add to the scoreboard when they kicked a penalty with the last play of the first half to bring the score to 3 – 10 and Goole now facing the strong wind and at times driving rain in the second half.
The quality of the match failed to improve on a worsening pitch as the game sunk into a torrid arm-wrestle and very little to brighten up a miserable afternoon for the away supporters and Bridlington started to get the upper hand as Goole once again kicked away possession. A Bridlington kick deep into the Goole 22 and a disrupted lineout resulted in the home side being awarded two consecutive penalties that they chose to run with no success and so it was no surprise that they opted for a kick at goal from a third penalty to narrow the gap to 6 – 10. As is often the case, when things start to go against you, so do the referee’s decisions as Goole were penalised, allowing Bridlington to gain ground and apply pressure on the Goole defence. It was therefore no surprise when the gap narrowed to just a point after Goole were penalised once again. 9 – 10 with twelve minutes remaining. At this point Goole were not helping themselves as a goal line drop kick restart went straight into touch to give the home team put in at a 5m scrum. Straight forward catch and pass from the scrum resulted in a converted try that the Goole defence would be disappointed to concede. 16-10 with eight minutes remaining.
Goole now needed to raise their game if they were going to pull this game out of the fire, yet things were just not going their way. A serious foul play incident by a Bridlington forward was missed by the referee and from the melee that followed Goole were awarded a penalty only for the referee to reverse his decision and allow the home side to clear once again with a player from each side in the bin. Interestingly, not the player that was guilty of the foul play. That was just about Goole’s last chance as they failed miserably to threaten the home team try line at all in the second half as the referee blew the final whistle to end this poor-quality game. Full time 16 – 10 and a losing bonus point for Goole which was scant return for what the travelling supporters expected.
No individual Man-of-the-Match contenders with the front row probably deserving recognition for their overall performance and in particular early scrum domination where Goole should have focused on building an unassailable lead whilst they had everything in their favour. Disappointingly poor game management and decision making let them down, with possession once again being kicked away far too often. With a tough Yorkshire Cup Semi-final game against Cleckheaton next Saturday, the squad will have to pull together and get back to the high standard of team performance that we have seen so often this season.