Pershore sink lacklustre Spa

Leamington travelled to Pershore full of confidence, with the Midlands Two West (South) basement side leaking points at an alarming rate.

However, a recent home win against in-form Berkswell & Balsall pointed to an upturn in fortunes for the hosts and the Spa men failed to take heed, slumping to their ninth defeat of a topsy-turvy campaign.

Pershore had the best possible start to the game as they hit Spa at pace in the opening minutes and despite two try-saving tackles, first by Adam Preece, then by Alex Carroll, they bulldozed over for an unconverted score.

Spa hit back with some strong running from Simon Harry and John Holland and they increased the pressure on Pershore when Craig Smith made a break down the touchline and just failed to get his pass to winger Richard Staff.

Pershore’s mobile forwards had weight advantage in the set piece and were causing more problems than one might expect from a side languishing at the foot of the table.

Spa, and in particular Simon Harry and Craig Smith, had to do plenty of work in defence to keep the home side at bay.

In the last five minutes of the half, Spa hit the home side with a well-worked try.

Andy Anderson secured the ball from the base of the scrum and slipped a pass to Patrick Northover. The young scrum-half picked his moment to send Staff off on a run which ended in a score in the corner. Northover claimed the extras with a superbly judged kick from wide out to give Spa a 7-5 lead at the break.

Undeterred at losing a lead they had held for most of the first half, Pershore responded almost immediately from the restart with a break through midfield to score under the posts.

They further increased their lead as they cleverly moved the ball from a scrum in their own half and hit Spa at pace to score a second converted try.

Spa, were not quite firing on all cylinders and took some time to recover from the early setback.

When they did respond, they were met with stubborn resistance, which only began to creak in the latter stages of the match.

Alex Carroll set John Raby on a run down the near touchline and the Spa winger’s strong run was held up just short of the line.

Then Northover skipped over for a score, which he converted to bring Spa within touching distance of a win.

Unfortunately, the clock was against them and they fell just short in their attempts to claim victory.