Ellon 48 v Peterhead 24

Published on Wednesday 7 September 2011 www.ellontimes.co.uk

Ellon 2nds 48 - 24 Peterhead

Ellon Seconds emerged triumphant over Peterhead, in what was the first game of the new season in the newly revamped Caledonia North East Division 3.

Peterhead won the toss of the coin and opted to kick into Ellon first. However, it was Ellon who raced into a 15-0 lead, scoring three tries but missing their conversions.

Peterhead’s shaky start continued when Kris Chalmers was sin binned for ten minutes for handling at the ruck on the 2nd attempt. However, in the final ten minutes of the first half, Peterhead started to get a foothold into the game and started to dominate in terms of possession.

They got the chance to hit back when Ellon were penalised for handling on the deck. Peterhead captain Daniel Smith quickly tapped the ball and raced home over the tryline catching out the Ellon defense.

Nat Johnson narrowly missed the posts with his conversion leaving the score at 15 points to 5 for the home side. Peterhead scored again after Chalmers emerged from his spell in the sin-bin, when Ellon lost the ball on the half way line. Ewan Massie picked up on the Ellon mistake and made a storming run up the wing, fending off a few tackles using his upper body strength well.

The ball was recycled into a ruck before being shipped out to the forwards. A series of well worked offloads saw the ball passed to Colin Murison who cleverly used the overlap by passing to Oliver Christie, who ran over to score. Again, however, the conversion was missed and the referee called an end to the first half with Ellon leading 15-10

Ellon kicked off the second half and proceeded to dominate the first twenty minutes, as Peterhead failed to build on their good play from the closing stages of the first half.

The home side soon raced into a 34-10 lead, forcing Peterhead into a series of changes, with Oliver Christie, Nat Johnson and Freddie Thacker coming off for Ritch Needes, Ronnie Manning and David Crowther.

When Peterhead did eventually get possesion, they didn’t fail to waste it. Peterhead had a penalty and opted to kick for touch. Peterhead won the line out and the ball got passed out to the backs, where the effective Toby Johnson was gaining many yards as Ellon strugled to cope with his power.

The ball got shipped into the forwards and there was a maul on the 5 meter line. Nathan Smith, making his debut, gathered the end of the maul and pushed forward to lunge over the try line stretching his arm with the ball over touching down for Peterheads third try.

David Crowther converted the conversion to make the score 34-17. However, Peterhead were again reduced to 14 men as Mike Barclay was sin binned for coming in from the side of the ruck on a number of occasions.

Ellon made their extra man count and sailed into a 48-17 lead.

However, with about five minutes remaining, a scrum from the 25 meter line was won by Peterhead. as Crowther passed to Daniel Smith, who made good use of his quick pace and ‘dancing’ feet come up short two meters from the try line, Mike Reeves and James Scarisbrick cleared over allowing Fraser Macfarlane to pick up the ball and power past the defence scoring the last try of the game. David Crowther followed up the try with a successful conversion as Peterhead ended the game on a positive manner.