Barbarians Win in the Wild West

This Game was never going to be easy, West Leeds coming into the clash having lost only 1 league game this season so far.

The bees faced into a strong rain filled wind and after a tense opening 10 minutes where both sides had a good share of the ball, the home side started to take the upper hand. West Leeds started to put pressure on the scrum and had some strong driving line outs but were unable to break down a extremely resilient bees defence. The occasional run from fly half Shaun Driver and wing forward Richard Tafa providing the only respite. It wasn't until the last 5 minutes of the half that West Leeds took advantage of the pressure and from another driving line out managed to barge over for the first try of the game, from the restart bees suffered another big blow by losing the tenacious Richard Duttine to injury which took a little shine off a hard fought forty minutes. HT 5-0.

At the break bees made a few changes bringing 'foggy' Phillips, Phil Greaves and Ollie Smith into the mix. These changes sparked a bit of attacking flair and bees started to dominate in the loose but again struggled in the scrum. After 10 minutes of the second half changes to the front row saw Lewis Brook move to prop, this change immediately had and impact on the scrum and bees started to put in real pressure in this area. Hard work in the loose paid off when a break to the right hand side of the field and some lightening quick hands saw Darryl Wilson eventually slide over the try line in the corner. 5-5. The bees now had the momentum and were on the front foot and were now dominating the scrum both with and without the feed. Mistakes started to creep into the West Leeds game and an infringement in mid field gave Shaun Driver the chance of 3 points which he duly converted 5-8.

The next try came to the credit of the away pack when after winning a scrum against the head, this allowed some direct running, a great offload from josh seal and Ollie smith went over near the posts, Shaun converting 5-15. Bees continued to put pressure on the West Leeds pack and it wasn't long before the try of the game was scored, some good recycling of the ball and some great passing in midfield Jack Malthouse went round the defence to score a brilliantly worked try, Shaun converting 5-22.

With bonus point looming and Bees being on top in most areas at this stage, Oli Stewart was on hand to round off a man of the match performance and forced himself over for a last minute try. Great result for the Barbarians FT 5-27.