Lions roar against Newick

This was the Lions second win of the season but had a number of areas to improve on. Newick to their credit played with confidence and power, but found it hard to live with the Lions pace and fitness.
Horsham started the quicker of the two sides making a number of breaks by the backline, only to be frustrated by poor execution. Blind side flanker Jordan Smith spotted a gap in Newick’s defence on their line and drove through for the Lions first try. Newick came back with power and gained the ascendancy in the scrums and applied pressure for the remainder of the first half, but were never in a position to threaten the Lions line.

The Lions responded in the second half after a debrief on their lack lustre performance in the break, and started the second half working more as a team and put immediate pressure on Newick by an outstanding break from the restart by Neal Holden deep into Newick’s 22. Only to lose the ball in the breakdown, however the referee blew up for a knock-on by Newick and awarded us a scrum 1m off their line that gave Liam Brady the opportunity to drive over for our second try of the match. A well taken conversion by Jack Gates gave the Lions the extra 2 points. From this point on we dominate the run of play with our backs counter attacking that took Lions well into Newick’s territory only to be rolled back through poor discipline in the breakdown. The 3rd try came from an outstanding counter attack off the back of a scrum just outside the 22 with the best passage of play. With quick hands moving the ball away from the break down to put Michael Fisher to finish a well worked team try converted by Jake Gates.

From the restart the Lions made a number of outstanding breaks but as in the first half to be disappointed by losing the ball in contact. In the dying minutes of the second half the Lions again made an excellent break from a scrum just inside Newick’s half only to be held up on their line, and despite a number of drives the Lions had a number of opportunities to score but disappointed by not keeping control of the ball. It was at this point that Kyle Fairs was injured, however despite being in a scoring position with the ball still in play the referee blew up for full time.

Despite a lack of cohesion and fluency In the Lions play we were able to pull off a win against a dogged side that never gave up and at every opportunity put us under pressure at the break down and on their scrum, It is to the Lions credit that they have the depth on belief and dogged belief to fight through and win.

Victorious Lions Manager Andy Layzell said, “We got the win we wanted which was our target but failed to capitalise on our opportunities to get a bonus try but we’ll take the positives from that. It was not the performance that we wanted to achieve and the team played like a collection of individuals. There was poor execution of basic skills and we did not go through the phases. Only in the second half did we start to play as a cohesive team and start to run more directly with purpose and look more dangerous when they started to fall off tackles.”

The Lions next match is at home against Bognor Regis 2’s on the 27th September.