Rammo’s Blog

Mick Ramsden

We won our first Northern Rail Cup game on Sunday at Doncaster by 29 -18 with a good first half performance that pretty much sealed the game for us. The second half, however, was patchy and the players started to drop off tackles which allowed Doncaster back into the game. Could this have been a case of taking the foot off the gas? Maybe so, but, but we can’t afford to do this as teams in the Championship will be stronger and we will need those all important “eighty minute” performances that we always strive to get from the team.

Nevertheless, we got the win and some players really shone at the Keepmoat Stadium. Ben Hellewell got through a mountain of work as did Jack Aldous and Ed Smith. James Ford is looking sharp this year and scored two good tries, one of which was almost a full length sprint after Doncaster spilled the ball near to our line. He was clocked at 11.4 seconds over 90 metres and finished it by saluting to a nearby camera who was working for the local Doncaster newspaper and probably just deleted the photo as soon as he ran off!

Matty Garside was unstoppable at times with his weaving runs and he deserved his man of the match award in the York Press. Waine Pryce was also a handful and got us on the front foot a number of times. When forwards see a winger coming in field or scooting from acting half they normally look for the big shot but you won’t see Waine suffer many of those, he’s lightning just before contact and he’ll punch between them on most occasions for a quick play-the-ball. He picked up a slight ankle injury but should be okay to face Swinton tomorrow night.

There’s every chance that Paul King will be playing tomorrow night against Swinton, having excluding him from last week’s team at Doncaster. We just needed to be more sure that his injury has healed enough before selecting him and the results from his latest x-rays were much better. He was very disappointed to be left out last week but we were only doing what we thought was best for his health…and at the end of the day we need him to be fit for the rest of the season rather than bringing him back too early.

Lastly, a big thanks to our travelling army at Doncaster, and look forward to seeing you all again tomorrow night.

Cheers

Rammo