DANGER ZONE

Newly-relegated Bridlington visited Beechwood with the very clear intention of improving their mid-table position through their low risk strategy of ball retention and minimum use of their backs.

With the wind advantage they quickly established themselves inside the Lymm 22 metre area. Then a series of rucks lead to a scrum within 10 metres of the Lymm line from which they executed a simple blind side move to open the scoring with an unconverted try.

A similar pattern of play put Bridlington into another dangerous position from which they scored a push-over try to give the visitors a 10-point lead after 10 minutes.

Lymm began to play with greater purpose and could not be faulted for their determined tackling of their back row and centre play but the few attacks they launched were easily countered by long, wind-assisted kicks.

One of these caused the home side to be penned on their line for a long and desperate period of defending which finally, after a succession Bridlington tapped penalties, resulted in them being awarded a penalty try.

Lymm's almost immediate response to finding themselves 17 points in arrears was to surge towards their opponents line and at a resulting scrum scored a pushover try to leave the score at 17-5 at half-time.

Favoured by the wind in the second half, Lymm quickly got themselves in to position for another pushover try but failed to ground the ball when it crossed the line.

The missed chance was to cost Lymm dear as they were then restricted to a couple of long range penalty attempts until Keir Woods intercepted and raced 60 metres to score in the left corner.

This was a moment of excitement in an otherwise dull game in which defences and tight forward play dominated, leaving Lymm to regret their failure to score when they had the opportunity.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.