Sleaford…38 Glossop 1st XV (sponsored by Aldi)…15
With England’s quarter-final clashing with this fixture, the already unattractive prospect of travelling to the boring flatlands of Lincolnshire became almost an unbearable prospect. The day only got worse for the band of down beat Glossop players as a well drilled Sleaford side took full advantage of their under strength opponents.
Sleaford won the game in the first fifteen minutes as Glossop were still listening to the cheers of the Sleaford faithful, who were watching England pull off an unexpected victory over Australia. When they did turn their attention to the local encounter, Sleaford had put the game out of Glossop’s sight. The Lincolnshire sides solid scrimmaging and the ruthless boot of their fly-half proved too much to handle.
Glossop did rally at stages of the game and registered three tries, two of which were as a result of Dan Clark’s excellently secured line-out ball followed by well worked mauling by the Glossop pack. The positives from this game were that Glossop looked very dangerous at times in the backline, with Jon Murphy, Lee Pickerell and Zac Round all putting in impressive displays. Captain Brammer did not take a backward step as he was repeatedly charged at by much bigger back row forwards and Clark was magnificent at the front of the lineout. Scrum-half Danny Sims, Alan Barth, Phil Littlewood and Brendon Stanford also deserve a mention for standing in for those players otherwise engaged.
A somewhat disappointing result was recorded at home by the 2nd XV (sponsored by Tame Estates), who went down 21-15 to Manchester 3rd’s. It was left then to the third team boys to salvage something from the weekends fixtures, they did just that with a good away win at Ashton, beating their 2nd XV by 29 points to 19. This win takes Kevin Swifts mighty men to 3rd in the league table.